Gentlemen, sorry for late reply. I forgot to bookmark the thread and forgot about it! Thanks for your input.
I was hoping for an off-the-shelf solution as far as the SDR dongle goes rather than spending time experimenting with different software and tweaking settings that frankly aren't really of any interest to me. I may go for one of the off-the-shelf airband configured ones on Ebay as I don't mind the extra expense if it means I don't have to mess around with it. I know HAMs are into all this tweaking and get a great deal of enjoyment from it but I am not a HAM and just want something that "works" out of the box.
I am 1 mile to the east of LBA in the Adel area so I'm hoping I should be able to pick up the tower with a loft antenna like a J-Pole if it will fit, although there is a bit of a hill in the way.
I am also well aware of the frothing that topics on listening to UK ATC seems to attract and checking some old threads here this site seems to have more than its fair share of frothers too!
Not sure why as there are a handful of public feeds for listening to UK ATC now if you know where to look and none have attracted any interest from OFCOM whatsoever.