Ministry of Defence attacked over RAF Bentley Priory museum (From Harrow Times)

Ministry of Defence attacked over RAF Bentley Priory museum

8:20am Wednesday 25th March 2009 in

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THE Ministry of Defence has been labelled “irresponsible” over how it handled the sale of RAF Bentley Priory.

As the Harrow Times exclusively revealed earlier this month, plans to preserve the spiritual home of “The Few” with a commemorative museum have been mothballed following the collapse of a housing project needed to fund the scheme.

Councillor Marilyn Ashton, responsible for planning at Harrow Council, says she is concerned for the project's future and requested a meeting with the MoD to ask them for support.

But the department refused and the gloves have come off, with Cllr Ashton calling into question its approach to the issue from the word go.

She said: “I didn't want to have to put it this way. What I wanted was to get a result.

“But I think that most people, when they realise how fragile this really was, realise how irresponsible the MoD were in their behaviour initially.

“I think they sold it and then thought 'oh, there's a listed building there, I don't know what we are going to do about that'. They just didn't think.

“There are people who died so that we could live freely and we have to have a bit of an idea about what that means to people.”

She has written to the ministry to express her views, saying if the Government can find money to rescue banks it should be able to find it to rescue what was the home of Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain.

The museum was to be run by the RAF Bentley Priory Battle of Britain Trust, but much of the funding would have come from developers as part of the terms of their permission to use the site.

Cllr Ashton said: “I hope that the MOD will realise that they have let people down and I'm calling on them to make a substantial contribution to the refurbishment of the museum so that it becomes a more attractive proposition to a would be developer.”