If you have been following the recent emails and posts, you may be wondering what happens next. What is going to become of Plymouth Airport?
 
We are no fortune tellers, but it is possible to form a reasonable picture of what is being lined up. And as much of this is in the public domain and in the public interest, here goes:
 
Plymouth Airport is in a parlous state and the subject of a wrangle between the leaseholder and Plymouth City Council which owns the freehold. Both would like to develop it as there are tens of millions to be made.
 
But why would the City Council allow the leaseholder to do so when they regard them as the minority stakeholder? The first item of business must be to remove the leaseholder. This may explain the big-ticket articles in the press about how much the lease is worth.
 
The Council has two main options to remove the leaseholder. First is Compulsory Purchase Order (CPO), the second is legal action for breach of the Airport Lease. CPO sounds the obvious candidate. But to succeed, this would have to be on the basis of aviation - the Planning Use.
 
That means the Council would require an aviation partner. And they would be obliged to reopen the airport – not get to develop it. They cannot CPO on their own so they will dismiss this option.
 
But they can litigate on their own.

At some point Council’s legal advisors will be trawling through the lease looking for arguments to bring the lease to an early end. That process may or may not lead to court action depending on how confident the leaseholder feels about defending the case.
 
If there is too much uncertainty, expect an out-of-court settlement and an announcement that Plymouth City Council has finally stepped up and acquired Plymouth Airport.
 
But don’t celebrate too hard. Council Tax-payers will be paying for the Council’s losing control of Plymouth Airport when they accepted closure on that poorly-drafted lease.
 
And this will still be far from over.
 
The Council's officers will next present options to Cabinet for a decision. At the risk of second guessing, the options may look something like this:
 

1. Full development of the airport site for mixed use generating lots of employment and revenues to the city. In other words, just what the Leaseholder has been advocating but now led by the Council.
   
   How could councillors refuse? Well, they may object to the loss of aviation and they may wonder how the roads and other infrastructure will cope when the area is often gridlocked at peak hours today. So they may go for option two:
   
   
2. The Council could develop the bigger part of the airport site bringing in all that lovely revenue and employment while retaining some form of aviation. Helicopters will return. The campaigners will be mollified and perhaps even UAV and EVTOL aircraft will appear in time. Lower density development will mean that infrastructure is less badly strained. ‘It was the best we could do’, we will be told: - ‘a bit of both. Good compromise. Well-done Plymouth!’
   
   Maybe not. Option 2 might bring in revenue but only by selling the family silver:
   
   Plymouth Airport would lose its runway.
   
   If this happens, Plymouth will be no better connected with the rest of the country than it is now. Helicopters provide valuable services but without passenger activity, noise would increase while public transport stood still. EVTOL aircraft will not be seen in service until well into the 2030s as there is no present roadmap for approvals.
   
   And as it dawns on people that this noisy heliport might be sited elsewhere, a subsequent development phase will be proposed and what remains of the airport will be reduced to a helipad or lost for good.
   
   
3. But there is an Option 3 and Option 3 is real: Plymouth Airport is retained with its full runway and operational areas – as the city has repeatedly asked for.
   
   Going this route still allows for considerable industrial development to take place so generating a good chunk of that income and jobs to underpin the airport’s future sustainability.
   
   FlyPlymouth has set out a roadmap whereby reopening Plymouth Airport as a general aviation (GA) airfield allows a return to commercial passenger services. Initially 12 or 19-seater aircraft growing to 40 and 50-seaters depending on routes and operators.
   
   The first decade after reopening promises a number of new electric aircraft in the fleet meaning it will be cleaner to fly from Plymouth to London, Manchester or Scotland than to drive or take the train. These aircraft will also be quieter and quicker off the same length of runway.
   
   There is also evidence that Plymouth Airport has a real prospect of reconnecting with major London hubs in a way that would be transformational for the city. Electric aviation, changes following the massive pandemic shakeup and future changes at Heathrow open possibilities that Plymouth could benefit from.
   
   ​So don’t let them talk you out of Option 3.

Work on options something like those outlined above will have been ongoing over the past couple of years. That is what officers do. But it was officers that lost control of the airport under the present lease and officers that will be bailed out by Council Tax-payers when the airport is recovered.

Councillors on the other hand are elected to make the decisions and direct the officers on your behalf. So it is worth speaking with or writing to your Councillor to let them know your views.

In the next article, something more positive: FlyPlymouth’s vision for Plymouth Airport

​Local planning policy (2019) safeguards Plymouth Airport for five years to allow for its return to aviation. However, Plymouth City Council – who’s policy this is – has raised insurmountable hurdles for would-be operators, threatening to kill off any real prospect of its reopening.
 
How has it done this?
 
First by accepting the airport’s closure on the provisions of that poorly-drafted lease. Would-be operators are first obliged to remove the present leaseholder. That leaseholder is asking an amount of money that would sink a new business.

The Council has done and is doing nothing about this.
 
But new operator would also have the cost of putting the airport right. Dilapidations since closure were estimated at up to £5 million five years ago. These might have been prevented under the lease and the site maintained.

The Council has done and is doing nothing about this.
 
The Council accepted that it had a PRO-ACTIVE role to play to resolve the leasehold when the policy was adopted. For the next two and a half years, it did nothing. That is half the safeguarding period gone.
 
Nick Kelly, to his credit took the issue up on becoming Leader of the Council. But since his departure last month, who knows where this goes?
 
The argument seems to be being spun that no business has shown interest in operating Plymouth Airport since its closure in 2011.
 
Odd that, because in 2017 FlyPlymouth provided a 35-page summary of its business plan as part of the evidence that helped the Council secure its policy. In 2020, FlyPlymouth submitted a detailed 150-page version of the updated business plan. This incorporated an economic impact assessment and eight letters of interest including one from Babcock.
 
Since the Local Plan was adopted in 2019, FlyPlymouth has met with the Council leaders and their officers on at least 11 occasions, suggested numerous options and revisions on ways of making this a reality. We have introduced them to team, our partners and financial backers including private equity and venture capital firms. We have taken part in the Council’s market testing exercise (2020) and offered to buy the site from them at a fair commercial price. We have asked them to stand behind an offer to buy the leaseholder out.
 
Nothing. Has. Happened.
 
We ARE very much interested! But are they?

Has Plymouth City Council lost control of Plymouth Airport? That’s the advice FlyPlymouth received from a leading law firm specialising in airports and planning law. In their words the airport lease situation at Plymouth is a ‘mess.’
 
The advice says that the ‘Armageddon Clause’ under which the airport was closed, is poorly drafted, unclear and open to interpretation. That uncertainty is made worse by the amount of time that has passed since closure and the Council’s flip flopping over whether it wants the airport shut or reopened.
 
Having lost control of the process with Plymouth Airport, the Council has potentially lost control of the airport itself. Who knows what a court will make of it!
 
It looks like someone screwed up. Why did the Council agree to the airport’s closure without first insisting the lease was made fit-for-purpose as part of the agreement on non-viability? Who advised the Cabinet to sign off on these terms? What legal advice did they ask for before so doing and what advice did they receive?
 
Why this matters hardly needs answering. As well as being unique and vital transport infrastructure, the airport is one of Plymouth’s largest strategic assets. But who controls it? And, if in fact Plymouth City Council has lost control, how do they intend to get it back? Can they afford to do so? And if they can’t afford to get it back, does their screw up mean that Plymouth loses its airport?
 
We’ll talk more about this over the coming weeks but for now you might want to contact your local councillor and ask them to find out what is going on.
 
Note, the above is a matter of public interest and firmly within the public domain. The airport lease documents are publicly available from the Land Registry and anyone is free to seek a legal opinion on those documents.