On March 11th Mike Frain talked to Members about the rapid
development
of the British Aerospace Richmond Road factory from 1986 until its
demolition in 1993. Short (4:00) slide
show and video of start building in 1917 to demolition.
Mike served an engineering apprenticeship with
Lever Brothers Ltd (Unilever) covering all aspects of factory
maintenance and achieved his engineering and managerial qualifications
studying in Cheshire and Essex. He was appointed Company Planned
Maintenance Engineer with Unilever (Holpack Ltd) based in Suffolk. This
site was acquired by Metal Box Ltd and closed in 1972 so Mike applied
successfully for the position of Deputy Works Engineer with Hawker
Siddeley Aviation, Kingston and Dunsfold, and was appointed Works
Engineer on the retirement of Alf Sheppard
Mike was asked in 1986 to take on the role of
Industry Year
Co-ordinator for the unit, reporting to the Chairman of British
Aerospace, Sir Austin Pearce, who was heavily committed to the project.
Some 500 schools were supplied with information packs and given
visits
to the Kingston and Dunsfold manufacturing and assembly facilities.
This initiative was also supported by a number of local businesses and
organisations including the British Institute of Management, Kingston
Branch, of which Mike was appointed Chairman.
In 1986 another important challenge arose with the
closure of the
Weybridge site. The Impact on the Kingston-Dunsfold unit was enormous
with the sudden need to create considerable new or extended facilities
on both sites in addition to those already planned.
The magnitude of
the tasks being placed on Works Engineering was so great that two
multi-page ‘newspapers' were produced to illustrate the work being
planned on both sites. These were distributed to all employees and
surrounding residents to make them aware of, and gain their support
for, the high level of work to be expected by day and night.
A £10 million budget (£30m in today’s money) was authorised for the work which included a new business centre, a new 5000 meals-per-day restaurant and catering block, a new state-of-the-art metal treatments facility, major conversion of the front office block including an extension to the Design Office, reorganisation of the riverside office building and admin. building, and a new car park.
Incredibly, with this major and expensive programme well under way the British Aerospace management changed its mind and announced that the Kingston site was to be closed and all work moved to other sites. The technical staff would be rehoused in a new BAe Aerospace Park at Farnborough, or at Dunsfold or move to Warton, and manufacturing would move to BAe sites in the north. Final assembly work and flight testing would continue at Dunsfold
A number of projects could not be stopped, either for commercial or contractual reasons, including the business centre. The building of the new restaurant and the metal treatments plant was underway and the front office block was completedA two day public auction sale of plant, manufacturing equipment,
office furnishings and anything else saleable that had not been moved
to other BAe sites, took place in July 1992.
After closure certificates had been issued by all departments Mike signed the papers for site closure and hand-over to Arlington Business Park Services at 9.35 am on the 24th December 1992, thus enabling demolition to begin
The site was redeveloped by Trafalgar Developments with three builders involved: Bryant, Laing, Barratt and Affordable Housing; 360 homes were built.