I am more than aware of how it worked Shy.😊
There were a number of forces who participated in consortia air units, who were quite clear that once the austerity cuts kicked in, their participation in air support was going to end. I think a lot of us connected with air support at the time, thought we might move to a number of multi-aircraft/ multi-base regions. Knowing that eventually those regions would drop one or more bases and one or more aircraft. But the savings would be spread out to all forces in the region and the drop in service understood and accepted by all forces in the region. Once the decision to have a national service was approved, the die was cast and here we are.
