'Pandemic will not scupper Doncaster airport plans for railway station'

Don Valley MP Nick Fletcher made the remarks to business owners via a video conferencing meeting with Doncaster Chamber of Commerce.

He was asked if huge public spending used by the government to pay furloughed workers and provide emergency support to other sectors would hit big projects further down the line.

But the Conservative MP said he ‘does not see’ the government turning its back on plans to ‘level up the country’ and said the ‘worst case scenario’ was projects like the one at Doncaster Sheffield Airport would be put back ‘one or two years’.

In January, airport bosses revealed a £10 million expansion plan with the aim of maximising the potential of the existing runway – currently capable of carrying 25 million passengers per year – through the construction of a seven-kilometre railway link between the East Coast Mainline and Lincoln Line.

They said the plans will quadruple the number of people within a 90-minute radius of the airport via sustainable transport.

More than 3,000 homes are also in the pipeline on land around the airport.

Mr Fletcher said: “There will be a point when we actually look at what we’ve spent as a country to get through the coronavirus pandemic, but I don’t think this Government is going to stop its infrastructure spending - I do not see that happening.

“I may be wrong, I’m a backbench MP and don’t form part of the government, but from what I hear and what I feel around the levelling-up agenda and the entire campaign we fought on was based on that and on Brexit.

“I don’t think Covid-19 will be an excuse to stop projects like this from happening - worst case scenario it might put us back a year or two.

“I think the government wants to push forward with that.

“Every opportunity I get to push forward the main goals that I think that would benefit Doncaster the best over the next five to ten years I will do that.”

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