A couple of points:
1) This is not exactly "news". According to the BBC article in the OPs link, the MOD withdrew from Upwood in
1995, that's 20 years ago, and it would appear that RAF Cardington closed in 2000.
2) This is not a phenomenon solely found in the UK. I remember a link to a website I saw some time ago, probably on Pprune, which showed some pictures of decaying former soviet Army, Air force and Naval bases, often with huge housing areas of concrete flats slowly crumbling away, ships rusting, etc. There was also an episode of Top Gear (series 21 episode 3) where Clarkson and team drove cars around abandoned Russian submarine and missile bases in the Crimea and Ukraine.
Edited to add:
http://www.urbanghostsmedia.com/2015...ases-sub-pens/
http://jalopnik.com/the-ten-most-imp...the-1527822770
http://io9.com/these-abandoned-tanks...ars-1100567629