Objectors backed in battle over airfield park-and-ride project

Councillors were due to discuss proposals for a park and ride on the old Hedon airfield at a meeting tomorrow but the application has been withdrawn after attracting numerous objections and a recommendation for refusal by planners.

Hull Council leader Carl Minns said the authority would look at putting in a revised application in during the summer, either for the airfield or another site.

He said: "We are committed to a park and ride in the east, but clearly there have been a number of objectors. If the objectors think they have a better site we will look at that with an open mind."

The council has been looking at building the facility on land it owns just outside Hedon for more than a decade. The park and ride would have provided space for 694 cars, with access onto the A1033 via a new roundabout.

But organisations including the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, Natural England as well as Hedon Town Council objected.

Highways officials were concerned the authority had decided on the airfield without properly examining the alternatives, while residents were worried about the impact on Hull Road, a single carriageway which already gets snarled up with traffic.

Others objected because of its environmental impact on the site – the area's original racecourse and first commercial airfield in the UK –- which has reverted to nature since the airfield closed and is now a wet grazing marsh.

The site, one objector wrote, is a "floodplain which acts as a soakaway during periods of heavy rain and has prevented catastrophic flooding in Hedon many times".

Natural England says the site is a "priority habitat" and was concerned about the impact of the proposals on the Withernsea railway, an important "green corridor" north of the site boundary.

Planning officials say even if the site is landscaped the proposals would cause "demonstrable harm" as it would cut into the green belt between Hedon and Hull. They also believe the council could have looked more closely at other sites including one to the north-west of the airfield, off Staithes Road, a brownfield site, with less in the way of wildlife.

Hedon-based estate agent John Dennis said: "Personally I am fully in favour of park and ride. It has to help the situation in the city, but it is a matter of where it is.

"Where it was going to be, on the main road between Hull and Hedon, would open it up for future developments and local communities are quite keen to retain the green belt between the city and town.

"It divides the city from the community of Hedon and people in Hedon want to keep it that way."

Hull Council says the airfield was the best of three shortlisted options and the park and ride will encourage people to use public transport.

The airfield provided the scene for the triumphant homecoming of Hull-born aviator Amy Johnson who landed there on August 11, 1930, in the plane she had recently flown single-handedly to Australia.

Hull Council bought the land for an airport in 1929. The airport was closed down at the start of the Second World War.

Hull Council first introduced a shuttle service into the city in the late eighties with a Saturday-only bus from the Walton Street fairground which was extended to weekday operation in the late 1990s.

A 2001 study suggested the city could sustain three park and ride sites but the council should first test the market by opening one in the west, which it did at Priory Park in February 2003.