Plymouth City Council - Doing NOTHING

​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?

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