WORK is to begin on ambitious plans to transform closed RAF Bicester into a specialist business park.

Efforts to reopen six buildings will begin this summer in the first phase of plans for 100 heritage motor and aviation firms.

They include a former fire station, pump-house and parachute store. It is hoped the first tenants will be in by the end of the year.

Venture capitalist and vintage motor enthusiast Daniel Geoghegan won a Ministry of Defence bidding war to buy the site in April.

Revealing the consortium paid £3.25m, Mr Geoghegan said it needs “multi-million pound” investment but predicted it will become a “vibrant” community within five years.

Mr Geoghegan, whose Bicester Heritage firm is behind the plans, said: “Our intention is to get on with it. When we have finished there should be hundreds of people working here creating opportunities for old and young.

“The site will house engineers and skilled people and will help move the industry from a cottage industry to something more consolidated.

“If skills are on one single site there is a much better chance of succession.”

Also planned is an training academy to teach specialist engineering skills, with a focus on repairing vintage motor vehicles and planes.

Mr Geoghegan said: “We had the business plan before we had the site. I walked in last August and thought ‘this is it’.

“We are all about preservation and promoting the usage of vintage machinery, not museum storage, we want to make sure mechanical devices remain dynamic.”

He said he has so far had had more than 70 enquiries, including one from a film company interested in using a hangar.

His firm is under strict planning restrictions because the site has listed buildings and scheduled monuments. Mr Geoghegan said most were in good order.

Among the other bidders was the Bomber Command Heritage charity, which wanted to create an education centre telling the unit’s story.

It said its aims were not compatible with those of Bicester Heritage, though the centre could go on another site.

The 1926 site was one of the RAF’s first bases and was a Bomber Command training base during the Second World War.

It was mothballed in 1976 but retains more than 50 buildings, including four aircraft hangars, 16 air raid shelters, workshops and station officers’ building.

It is split into two sites, the domestic and flying field – the domestic site was sold for housing in 2010.