’“WE will improve”. That was the pledge of AWE boss Steve Fussey after facing questions from Tadley residents about the August 2010 fire at the Aldermaston site.

Mr Fussey, site director at the Atomic Weapons Establishment, said of the fire: “It was a very significant event. It came as a shock to us and we take it extremely seriously.

“We had hoped to have published the findings of an independent review but this hasn’t been possible as we are regulated by a large number of bodies.

“The fire took place in an explosives building and since then certain operations have been suspended. We tried very hard to do all the right things at that time but certainly there were lessons to be learned.

“Our motto is ‘review, learn and improve’. We will learn from the recommendations which will be published in the report.”

Mr Fussey was speaking at the Annual Town Meeting for Tadley on Monday. It is the first time a representative from AWE has attended a Tadley council meeting since the fire, which raged at AWE Aldermaston for 11 hours throughout the night of August 3 2010 and the morning of August 4, last year.

The blaze was in a non-nuclear explosives section of the weapons plant and required the evacuation of 14 householders from Red Lane in Aldermaston.

Facing criticism from residents about the speed at which information about the fire was released Mr Fussey said: “We are working with our communications team to make sure that the local community are given more information more quickly, should we ever have a situation like this again.

“But we are doing all that we can to ensure that something like this never happens again.”