Government backs plans to reopen airport

The government will support the reopening of Doncaster Sheffield Airport (DSA), Chancellor Rachel Reeves has said.

In a major speech on economic growth, Reeves said the government would work with City of Doncaster Council and South Yorkshire Mayor Oliver Coppard to "recreate South Yorkshire Airport City as a thriving regional airport".

The Airport City plan includes reopening the airport, building hundreds of homes and creating a "world-leading sustainable aviation hub", Coppard said.

A decision from the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority on the council's plan to use £100m of public money on the reopening is expected by summer.

Eight hundred jobs were lost in November 2022 when DSA closed after Peel, the owner of the airport and the land, deemed it was not financially viable.

Reeves said: "It now sits idle despite the potential to drive jobs and growth across the North."

She recalled there was "overwhelming support" for it to stay open at the time.

Coppard said the Airport City plan would "create good jobs in the industries of the future", make "best use" of public money and reduce carbon emissions from flying.

Vincent Hodder, chief executive of Leeds Bradford Airport, said he opposed the use of public money to reopen the site.

He said: "Whilst we don't oppose the airport we do oppose the use of government funds to pay airlines to operate that airport.

"Having operated airline operations out of there myself when I worked for Flybe, I know that under the previous ownership a lot of airlines were paid to operate out of there.

"Their losses were underwritten so the taxpayer ends up funding both the cost of the operation as well as the losses incurred by the airline.

"To me that's unsustainable and it distorts competition in the market that should not be allowed and we will continue to fight on that particular point of subsidisation."

Climate experts voiced concerns about the environmental impact of reopening the airport and said it could not be justified during a climate crisis.

Richard Sulley, senior research fellow at the Grantham Centre for Sustainable Futures, said: "The authorities are stressing this [airport city] will be about building sustainable aviation, but the technologies don't exist yet, so there will be a period where aviation fuel is being burned."

Reeves also announced the government supported the expansion of Heathrow with a third runway.

Christine Gilligan Kubo, Green Party councillor for Hillsborough on Sheffield City Council, said airport expansion "cannot be part of any serious plans to address climate change".

"Reopening DSA with all its additional flights will only make achieving our carbon targets more difficult," she said.

"We see every day the impact of rising carbon emissions on our local and global environment.

"We know if these emissions aren't addressed it will only get worse."

Doncaster Central MP Sally Jameson said opening the airport would be "good for climate change" as it would prioritise "sustainable aviation".

"What we need to do [is] make flying more green, and we're not going to do that if we don't invest in those industries and that's what Doncaster Airport will be there to do," she said.

"I think this is really a statement from Doncaster that we are ambitious, we are ambitious for our future, we back ourselves, we back our industry we back our ability to make this work."

Ros Jones, Mayor of Doncaster, reiterated on Wednesday that passenger flights could return in spring 2026.

Listen to highlights from South Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North or tell us a story you think we should be covering here.