By April 1979 when Mike Disney's Working Group reported, the Appleton Laboratory had moved to the Rutherford Laboratory to become the new Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. Godfrey Stafford became Director of the Laboratory as a whole with John Houghton responsible for the Appleton side and Geoff Manning responsible for the Rutherford side. Bob Hopgood took over the Atlas Computing Division.
By the time the tendering exercise was complete, Bill Walkinshaw had retired as head of Computing and Automation Division in August 1979 and the two computing divisions had merged to become the Computing Division with Bob Hopgood as Division Head.
The astronomy staff involved in the Starlink procurement and set up were seconded to the Computing Division. This included Pat Wallace, Mike Lawden and Bob Dickens who became the initial Project Scientist.
