Doncaster Sheffield Airport lease renegotiations have ‘made progress’, says Oliver Coppard
Doncaster Sheffield Airport is being reopened by the local council using public funds.
The Mayor of South Yorkshire has said he thinks negotiations with the Peel Group on the lease for Doncaster Sheffield Airport have “made progress”.
Renegotiations of the airport lease, and clauses that Mayor Oliver Coppard’s team deemed to be “favourable to the landowner”, have been ongoing since September 2025 when the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority (SYMCA) Board approved nearly £160million in funding.
The money, which SYMCA will hand over to the City of Doncaster Council over the next 25years, is subject to the successful renegotiation of the airport lease.
Asked for an update on the renegotiations, Mayor Coppard said: “We’re negotiating with Peel… I think we’ve made progress. I don’t want to give away the devil of the detail because clearly they are commercially confidential.
“We are making progress on those lease negotiations, but it’s not stopping us from getting on with the work we need to do at DSA and the improvements that we need to see there to hit that timetable of Spring 2028.”
The Mayor refused to provide any sort of expectation or projection for when negotiations on the lease would finish.
He said: “We want to make sure that that funding is delivered to Doncaster Council and FlyDoncaster Ltd as quickly as possible, but we’re only going to do that, as I’ve always said, when all the I’s are dotted and the T’s are crossed.
“That’s why we’re working through the problem and making sure we’re getting this right for taxpayers, but also for DSA.
“I’m not going to put a deadline, just because we want to make sure that the negotiations are done properly, not just to an arbitrary timetable.”
The current lease between Doncaster Council and Peel has proven controversial ever since it was leaked to journalists in January 2026, revealing eyebrow-raising clauses related to planning permission and “turnover rent”.
Two clauses stipulated that Peel could terminate the lease if planning permission was not granted for two housing estates close to the airport, by the local planning authority.
Doncaster Council is the local planning authority in the region and both developments were approved in November 2025, under the watchful eye of Debbie Hogg, executive director of corporate resources, and Christian Foster, a senior director of the airport project, who both attended the meeting, but council officials insisted the independence of the planning process was not impaired.
Another clause, which stated Peel would receive 20 per cent of all “turnover rent” from the site, including local and national government grants, has proven to be a sticking point.
Sources have indicated this clause was one of the key issues SYMCA wanted renegotiating and is one of the last issues yet to be resolved in renegotiations.