NutLoose: Call me old fashioned but moving the Herc fleet from and shutting Lynham in the first place was to save money...
How does pouring hundreds of Millions into Brize to enhance the facilities to take the Herc fleet save money when the base they moved from to save doesn't actually close but additionally has hundreds of Millions poured into it as well... Cosford will not close per se as the Museum is on site, one would have thought moving the Army to Cosford etc and building new facilities on the far side of the airfield etc would have made more sense and have been cheaper than moving all of the schools to new sites.
My italics. Part of the cost of
staying at Lyneham was renovating the fuel storage and delivery pipelines. This would have been prohibitively expensive. From leaks, soil contamination and other unknown costs that could only be estimated until the actual digging had begun...