This is a part of an email they sent out recently
[my bold – they must be having a laugh]
Are they even sufficiently busy to justify having full ATC? Why not just downgrade to A/G radio (or even unattended operation)?
That is a Q many have asked when e.g. Shoreham “went bust” some years ago, and also in connection with extending opening hours at quite a variety of places which are near-useless for foreign travel due to silly opening hours. Answers seem to be elusive.
One sure thing is that with no ATC you lose all instrument approaches, under UK rules, unless you can fund a remotely located approach controller (which almost no GA airport can afford).
But the underlying issue seems to be that above a certain level of movements the UK CAA demand “ATC or nothing”. They have certainly done that for Shoreham, and that was even before the two mid-airs.
I always recall Cranfield for its in-your-face shitty treatment by ATC every time I went there. They would tell me to report at Woburn (a country house in the forest, south of the airport) even when approaching from the north! The based school(s) got absolute priority. They were flying B52 circuits with 100 mile finals so it was a detour to avoid that traffic. The landing fee was £30 plus £30 for an ILS. Then the school(s) went bust, and Cranfield embarked on a warm and fuzzy initiative with a £5 landing fee… as if this mattered because only the tightest pilots will be influenced by that to go to to that particular airport, and they won’t be spending money there anyway beyond some £3 all day breakfast 
A sad loss…
As a refugee from this farce, our shareoplane is currently and I hope temporarily at a crumbling 1940s runway with no facilities, my understanding of events is something like this. There are other interpretations, there is a huge thread on Flyer if anyone is particularly interested.
The airfield is owned by a rich university that in addition to aeronautical engineering also teaches airport and general business administration. The university appears to want the airfield (they make some use of it in their advertising of courses) but not be at all interested in it and does not need the income from it. The university appointed a small team of in-house and external people and organisations to run the airfield. Those people have proven to be ill-informed and arrogant which has led to the airfield being very quiet. Then the organisation to which the university contracted ATCO services was told that its contract will not be renewed next year. Consequently several ATCOs have left and ATC cannot be provided for the entire, already short, opening hours. The university ignored all advice about operating AFIS or AG or with blind calls and chose to take the action described by the OP (plus being completely closed Saturdays and Sundays). The university continues to pretend on its main and the airfield website that it is an open and friendly airfield. In my case, these events are an inconvenience to my hobby. For a number of aviation businesses of varying sizes these events may be fatal.
As it happens, I was about to get my boss to spend some thousands of pounds on training at the university. Purely because of the above events, I have found an alternative and am campaigning that we will use that alternative. As I said, the university has said that it is very rich so I guess they don’t care about this any more than the rent and fuel income that they get from the shareoplane but it makes me feel slightly better.
Peter wrote:
One sure thing is that with no ATC you lose all instrument approaches, under UK rules, unless you can fund a remotely located approach controller (which almost no GA airport can afford).
It’s prefereable to have VFR only than no airport at all (which is effectively the situation now).
True, but you might find that some based operators want IFR or nothing, but they aren’t going to push this openly because it makes them look unsupportive of the broader GA community 
Also, the cost of the service contracts, plus flight test services, for this nice pile of hardware
is going to be the bigger part of 100k a year, as a wild guess, and they aren’t going to dump it all willingly.
Cranfield is slowly returning to its normal self although that won’t be complete until the spring. Meanwhile, we have had a proposal from them that if we go back, our parking will be much more inconvenient and an order of magnitude more expensive. The website continues to give a, shall I say, misleading impression of their availability and attitude. All a great pity. It has the location and facilities to be an excellent local airfield, c.f. Gloucester, but there is no will. Talk of European flight test hub seems fanciful, there is an excellent European aviation industry, much of it in the UK, but surely that is not going to keep the place busy and profitable.
Joe-fbs wrote:
The airfield is owned by a rich university that in addition to aeronautical engineering also teaches airport and general business administration.
The university appointed a small team of in-house and external people and organisations to run the airfield. Those people have proven to be ill-informed and arrogant which has led to the airfield being very quiet.
I can’t help but laugh at the irony that a university teaching business administration has so badly managed the airport it owns.
Might this be due to the growing shortage of qualified ATC personnel in the U.K.?
Charlie wrote:
I can’t help but laugh at the irony that a university teaching business administration has so badly managed the airport it owns.
For those of us working in technical fields, dealing with the occasional strong willed and ignorant MBA victim, this is 100% par for the course Even worse because they seem to actively repel people with technical competence. I imagine UK ATC experts might have that reaction. It’s one of those cliches that seems to be true in real life.
