Historic runway at Brough Aerodrome will disappear under the path of new £6.5m link road

Work is due to start on Monday on the final phase of the Brough relief road, with the route crossing the old aerodrome site to join Skillings Lane with Moor Road.

The site was first used in 1916 by the Blackburn Aeroplane & Motor Company during the First World War to test seaplanes.

It was later used to prepare Yorkshire members of The Few, including Hull Spitfire pilot Ronald Berry for the Battle of Britain.

The Blackburn Beverley transport aircraft and the Blackburn Buccaneer maritime strike aircraft were both built at Brough by Blackburn & General Aircraft Limited. As part of Hawker Siddeley Aviation, the site produced Buccaneers in the 1960s.

The company became part of British Aerospace and later BAE Systems. The last Hawk jet trainer flew, used by the RAF, out from the site in 2011.

Now a tenant of Citivale, which operates the Humber Enterprise Park, BAE still employs 700 people at the site, which does sub-assembly manufacturing for the BAE Hawk and software engineering for the next-generation Tempest combat aircraft.

The bulk of the funding for the road comes from the Government’s Local Growth Fund (£3.2m), with developer Horncastle Group providing £1.6m, and £1.7m from the East Riding Council.

East Riding Council said it would ease congestion in the town centre and potentially unlock 85 hectares of employment land and 17,200 square metres of commercial space - possibly creating up to 600 jobs.

It will also link to new land for 550 houses as part of the Brough South development.

Council leader Richard Burton said the scheme would bring the town many social and economic benefits, including opening up a “huge area of land for major investment”.

Councillot Burton said: “Brough South led by the Horncastle Group and the Humber Enterprise Park led by Citivale are two employment related projects that have the potential to transform the growing town of Brough and make a significant contribution to the local and regional economy – but they are both constrained by access.

“Due to this, the council has taken the lead and forward-funded the design, planning and feasibility work for this final phase of the Brough Relief Road in order to accelerate the scheme and help to link these two important projects for the benefit of the town.”

But local councillor Sue Duckles was sceptical that it will ease congestion, saying: “All it is doing is spreading the traffic around. Everybody is still going to arrive at the same roundabout and the same set of traffic lights."

She added: "It's been an amazing site, but it has gone from thousands employed there to hundreds. From what we can see it is not creating the same high-skilled jobs that there used to be."