Doncaster Sheffield Airport: Campaign boss backs council's plan and criticises 'sour grapes' from Leeds Bradford Airport

Doncaster Council is creating a new special purpose vehicle company called FlyDoncaster to manage the airport as part of ongoing efforts to reopen it by spring next year. It intends to work with an unnamed private operator to run the site.

The council plans to provide the company with £105m in loans from its share of Government devolution funding for South Yorkshire. The low rate of the loans equates to an effective grant of £89.7m.

The planned use of public money has been criticised by Leeds Bradford Airport as risking “unfair competition”, while Conservative councillors have raised concerns about the extent of Doncaster’s devolution funding being directed towards the airport project.

But Mark Chadwick, leader of the SaveDSA campaign group, told The Yorkshire Post that the criticisms do not take into account the bigger picture.

He said the campaign has over 30,000 followers on social media, while there have been 130,000 signatures on petitions to save the airport.

"There is genuine public support for our airport,” he said.

"Our community wants this airport reopened. The City of Doncaster Council has been very entrepreneurial; they have seen what the community wants and have come up with a plan to reopen our airport.”

DSA supported around 2,700 jobs before it closed in 2022 but the proposals for reopening are connected to wider regeneration proposals for the area around the airport, which have been dubbed South Yorkshire Airport City. A recent report to the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority has suggested the reopening of DSA could help pave the way to the creation of 5,000 direct jobs connected to the wider redevelopment.

Mr Chadwick said: “It is the biggest development project that could happen in Doncaster for God knows how many years. They have claimed for every £1 spent, it will bring £9 back.

"You get the airport going and then that parcel of land can be developed for schools, shopping, houses, factories and warehouses. It will bring good-quality jobs.”

He said he believes the concerns raised by Leeds Bradford Airport about the use of public money on the scheme are “sour grapes” and do not take into account the cash being used coming from Doncaster’s share of devolution cash.

“Any competition should be good for business. I run a garage – there’s 40 garages in Doncaster and we make a living.

"There are so many airports in the UK and we have lost ours. It is not unfair competition – good competition breeds better businesses as far as I am concerned.

"It is not council tax money, it is devolution money to improve this area. I think it is a bit of sour grapes, I’ll be honest.”

A report by the Government’s Subsidy Advice Unit said this week that the subsidy was needed “to enable a sufficiently attractive internal rate of return to be achieved to a private investor” after previous attempts to find commercial operators to take on the site failed.

The report raised concerns about the need for clearer explanations from the council on issues such as passenger growth forecasts and the impact on competitors but concluded the subsidy is the “most appropriate option” to help reopen the airport.

Concerns were raised by other airport operators that more public cash will be required to prop up the reopened DSA.

But Mr Chadwick said he believes its new operating model, involving the council company as manager and an international airport operator doing the day-to-day running has a better chance of financial success than the previous model in which it was run by land and property developer Peel.

"It’ll be an airport operator running an airport,” he said.