Doncaster Sheffield Airport: Reform councillor denies missing key meetings as mayor warns move could 'kill' reopening
Reform has denied councillors have missed key meetings relating to the reopening of Doncaster Sheffield Airport, as they seek to pull the plug on a £57m loan in a move which Labour has warned could “kill” the project.
Coun Jason Charity, deputy leader of Reform UK Doncaster, told an extraordinary meeting of Doncaster Council last week that his party no longer supports the borrowing decision made in November.
The £57m loan was approved by councillors and has been used to set up Fly Doncaster, the arms-length body which is reopening the airport.
This will frontload the funding to ensure the project can get up and running, as the additional £160m from South Yorkshire Mayor Oliver Coppard will be allocated incrementally over a 50-year-period.
Coun Charity said the council had until the end of today to call an extraordinary meeting to vote on reversing the loan, otherwise councillors can convene one themselves.
While Reform has a majority on the council, the airport project has been led by directly-elected Labour Mayor Ros Jones.
Coun Charity said the council’s constitution is clear that votes can be reversed within six months, however Ms Jones’ team is taking legal advice around the £57m loan.
Fly Doncaster has made a number of key hires around the reopening in recent months, including air traffic controllers, and heads of cargo, general aviation and security.
A key issue raised by Reform has been the lease agreed between Doncaster Council and owner Peel Group.
According to a leaked copy of the lease, revealed by The Yorkshire Post, under the current terms 20 per cent of turnover from DSA is due to be paid to landowner Peel - potentially including taxpayer-funded grants.
The release of the £160m funding is dependent on renegotiating several aspects of the lease the council signed with Peel in March 2024 - with that process still to be concluded.
Concerns about break clauses “in favour of the landowner” on achieving passenger number targets above the most optimistic forecasts and “clarifying points in relation to turnover rent” are among the key areas being discussed.
However, Coun Charity has faced accusations that he has missed key meetings relating to the project to go through lease negotiations, being carried out by Mr Coppard’s team.
The South Yorkshire Mayor said: “Reform, before the election, they said they wanted to reopen DSA.
“We then saw Reform come into office and were given the opportunity, through my team at the mayoral combined authority in August of last year, to have oversight of the documents that we were pulling together.
“A thousand pages of due diligence and hard work that we had put into every single facet of that project, including which bits of lease need renegotiating, a master plan for the site.
“Jason Charity was invited to come to that meeting to see what work had been done, he didn’t turn up.”
Mr Coppard also alleged that Coun Charity missed a separate Doncaster Council briefing in November.
Reform said that its deputy leader attended one briefing and received materials from the other.
Coun Charity added: “We've had more PowerPoint slides than answers. That's not scrutiny,
that's a time-filling exercise dressed up as engagement.”
Mr Coppard also told this paper that the lease renegotiations, which are required to unlock the £160m of gainshare funding, were still ongoing with Peel.
“The work continues to be done,” he said, “these are complex and difficult negotiations and the last thing we need is for Reform councillors to call into question the commitment of the project of the council.”
Ms Jones added: “Doncaster Reform councillors were told in November that to reject the borrowing decision would effectively kill the airport project.
“It now appears that Reform are wanting to perform a screeching U-Turn on the very borrowing decision they voted in favour of just four months ago.”