Doncaster Sheffield airport could be open again in 2026, Turner & Townsend roundtable hears

Damian Allen, the chief executive of the city of Doncaster Council, provided an update on plans to re-open the airport at a roundtable event hosted by The Yorkshire Post and Turner and Townsend. Doncaster Sheffield Airport (DSA) closed in November 2022 after its owner, the Peel Group, said the site was no longer commercially viable. Mr Allen said that more than 130,000 people signed an online petition to save the airport. He added: “It is the ‘People’s Airport’, you ignore such mandates at your peril.”

Mr Allen said he hoped the airport could be operational again in 2026.

He added: "We are in the last stages of procurement. We are going through due diligence so we can confirm the status of the preferred bidder.”

"We will announce that when we submit our full business case, which we hope to be at the next South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority meeting, which will enable us to draw down our gainshare funding, which then means we can flick the switch and announce who is the preferred bidder because we know that people from Doncaster and beyond, will want to go on holiday from their airport in 2026.”

Dan Fell, CEO of Doncaster Chamber told the roundtable there was “brilliant collaboration” going on with regards to plans to reopen Doncaster Sheffield Airport and applauded the entrepreneurialism of the City of Doncaster Council in doing this.

The roundtable brought together leaders from across Yorkshire to discuss how they can work together to form policies which transform the region’s economy.

Mr Allen continued: “Shared risk, shared benefit is an important theme and you have to think big. Boldness is also important.

"Bureaucratic incrementalism has been a dominant and limiting mode of policy implementation in this country. What we need is more entrepreneurialism, whether that be in the public, or private sector. The challenge around discussing infrastructure, important as it is, is that it plays to the macro-economic drivers when we know a trickle down approach doesn't work.

"You need to have more of an enterprise-based culture. Skills are really important and it's important to have mobility; so people for example can live in Leeds, but work in Doncaster, drawing in those with digital and creative skills.

"Every month I go and visit several Doncaster businesses with Dan Fell and I am stunned by the level of innovation in our SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises).”

He said Doncaster aimed to create a stable foundation economy, which attracts and keeps higher skills, supported by an expanding advanced manufacturing sector particularly focused on rail and aviation “currently and more so once we re-open the DSA airport”. It also aims to attract emerging sectors such as digital and green technology, he added.

Mr Allen summarised by sharing a formula for economic prosperity in Yorkshire drawing upon the work of Andy Haldane CEO of the RSA and former Bank of England Chief Economist:

He added: “If we want a ‘Glocal Yorkshire (the best of local and global), then we need three Cs (collaboration, connectivity and clusters) and three Ds (diversity, dynamism and densification). This comes from the RSA’s work on unleashing the potential of UK cities and looking at economic mega-regions, which after all, is what Yorkshire is.”

Mr Fell added: "If there's clarity of intent people crowd in. Our successful Doncaster city status and Doncaster University Technical College bids were examples of this.

"When the clarity of purpose isn't there I can waste two thirds of a day sitting in aimless partnership forums, where people are intent on collaboration without knowing what they are collaborating for.

"This focus is so important. We get it more right with the big stuff than the small stuff.

"Infrastructure often is seen as an end in itself, rather than something that services growth. One of the critical challenges we have had in the infrastructure space in recent years is that – in the absence of an overarching Industrial Strategy – we don't know what these things are 'scaffolding' towards.

"This is inevitably exacerbated by piece meal funding pots.

"Over skills we are too easily defined by the problem than the opportunity. We've got fantastic things going on in the education and skills space.

"In South Yorkshire we have the AMRC (Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre) which is a world class training centre. We have fantastic UTCs (University Technical Colleges) and brilliant businesses who do workforce development superbly well."

Beckie Hart, the Regional Director of the CBI, said she had been “really buoyed” by how business organisations work together to influence policy.

She said leaders needed to work out what was in their gift to do at a regional policy level.

She added: "We should definitely be focusing on east-west rail connections rather than north-south. There's also a lot to be said for the investment in bus transport. A lot of people don't have access to a car. A lot of people living in cities need access to a bus service.”

This is the second in a series of articles about the roundtable, which was held at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel, Leeds, and chaired by Greg Wright, the deputy business editor of The Yorkshire Post.