Doncaster’s mayor has instructed the council to take legal action against the owner of Doncaster Sheffield Airport (DSA) to stop what she describes as the ‘stripping’ of the airport’s critical assets.
The Peel Group announced last month that it will not purchase DSA after concluding that the airport ‘is and will remain unviable.’
‘The high fixed costs associated with running a safe, regulated airport, together with recent events materially reducing prospective future aviation income streams, mean that a break-even business plan cannot be identified for the foreseeable future,’ a spokesperson for the council said.
Responding to a Parliamentary debate on Monday about the future of the airport, Doncaster mayor Ros Jones said that the Peel Group had set an ‘unreasonable closure timescale’ which undermined efforts to save the airport. DSA is set to close at the end of this month.
The mayor said that the proposals suggested for saving the airport during the debate were ‘either not feasible or not practical, especially within such a short timescale.’ She said that the council will consider initiating a Compulsory Purchase Order (CPO) and might even seek a judicial review of Peels decision.
Mayor Jones also said that she had heard that Peel had started to ‘degrade the site by stripping out critical assets to the operation of the airport’, which would make it ‘unusable and unsellable’.
‘This is totally unacceptable when we have brought potential buyers to their door and conversations are ongoing,’ she said.
‘So unless Peel confirms today they will not do anything to effectively wind down the site, then I have instructed Doncaster Council officers to go to the courts for an injunction to stop this. I have written to Peel setting this legal action out and that they must pause the airport closure so a sale can be agreed and jobs saved.’
The Peel Group has been contacted for comment.
