Reform UK hails victory after South Yorkshire Mayor announces plans to buy Doncaster Sheffield Airport

Reform UK Doncaster is hailing victory after the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority (SYMCA) announced it was set to purchase Doncaster Sheffield Airport.

The announcement from the South Yorkshire Mayor, Oliver Coppard, and Mayor of Doncaster, Ros Jones, on October 19, 2026, represents a change in direction from plans to operate the airport under a lease from the landowner, the Peel Group.

A spokesperson for the Reform UK group on the City of Doncaster Council said: “Our position has always been clear: we support reopening DSA, but taxpayers deserve a fair deal. We challenged Labour’s willingness to accept Peel’s lease terms because we believed they exposed Doncaster to unacceptable financial risks.

“That risk has now been mitigated. We believe Reform’s scrutiny and refusal to simply accept those terms helped put pressure on those responsible to secure a better arrangement.

“In our view, Mayor Ros Jones was out of her depth in handling a project of this scale and complexity, and SYMCA’s intervention has shown that from the outset the deals drafted were flawed and needed a complete re-write.”

Former Reform UK deputy leader, Councillor Jason Charity, called an extraordinary general meeting for May 2026, in which he said his party intended to ‘rescind’ approval for a £57million loan supporting the reopening.

Officials warned that doing so would ‘kill’ the airport project. The reopening was saved on the day of the meeting after a last-ditch amendment.

Mayor Coppard said the purchase deal for Doncaster Sheffield Airport would bring the site under the control of the SYMCA, but all was subject to approval by the SYMCA Board on October 27, 2026.

However, Doncaster Council, who negotiated and agreed the original lease with the Peel Group, are still a ‘really important partner’.

Speaking during the event yesterday, Mayor Ros Jones lauded the hard work council officials had put into the reopening so far.

She said: “From day one, I pledged to do everything I could to save this airport, not for political gain or career progression, but because I truly believe that is the right thing for Doncaster.

“I have not wavered from that and with my cabinet and council officers we have done the heavy lifting, worked around the clock and got us to this point.”

An internal email sent by Mayor Jones and Doncaster Council’s chief executive Damian Allen praised a number of high-ranking officials by name for their work.

This included Debbie Hogg, executive director for corporate resources; Faye Tyas, service director for finance and technology; and Scott Fawcus, service director for legal and democratic services.