[4] Warren Spring was planned by the Fuel Research Station's chief development officer, David Penny, who became the project's consulting engineer.

According to The Herald , "despite a rather vague and constantly changing specification, the Warren Spring laboratory at Stevenage was completed on schedule and met all the complex technical requirements".

[4] In the early 1990s, Michael Heseltine, the UK government's President of the Board of Trade, announced that Warren Spring Laboratory would move to new premises in nearby Welwyn Garden City.

[5][6] Later, however, following a report from the PA Consulting Group, Heseltine scrapped the plan and announced that the laboratory would merge with the Atomic Energy Authority (AEA) and transfer to Harwell, Oxfordshire instead.

In May 1993, an Early Day Motion supported by 89 mostly opposition (Labour) MPs noted "with concern reports that the President of the Board of Trade now intends to go back on the agreement reached in 1992 to relocate Warren Spring Laboratory and instead to close it with the loss of 150 jobs and scientific expertise built up over many years; and calls on the President of the Board of Trade to save Warren Spring Laboratory from closure".