WELL SAID NEVILLE: The Star reported this week that the former Sheffield City Airport runway is set to be dug up by the end of the year after the Government agreed a £1.8m loan. The long-expressed view of the FSB, supported by most Sheffield MPs and the majority of the business community, is that the authorities are at risk of making a big mistake in destroying a vital aviation link of the future. Robin Hood Airport is making massive losses, its passenger numbers are dwindling year-by-year and are lower now than when it first opened. The only realistic expectation is impending closure. In the likely event this occurs, South Yorkshire will be without a commercial airport of any description and will therefore be at a distinct competitive disadvantage for evermore with other city regions. Sheffield City Airport represents an £18 million investment on the part of the taxpayer which was intended to help regenerate the local economy: an aim which seems to have been swept aside in order to establish a nest-egg for a corporate property developer. The current owners bought the asset for £1 and will use yet further public money – starting with the government’s £1.8million – to build a business park on the land. Their sole interest is to capitalize on their good fortune by building a portfolio of rental property at public expense. Their free acquisition of this asset has been paid for by the taxpayer whose mistaken belief was that they were buying a city airport. Such corporate opportunism is an insult to the taxpayers who funded it. The FSB is therefore now urgently calling upon all the 5,700 people who signed our petition to write to their local MP and urge them to prevail upon HM Government to withhold any further funding towards the redevelopment of the site of the former Sheffield City Airport (including further destruction of its infrastructure) until an independent public enquiry is held to look into the potential for its future use as a facility for commercial aviation. Please use your own words, but issues you may wish to point out are: · Robin Hood Airport is a failing undertaking and, in any case, does not serve the business community with flights to any European commercial centres; · Sheffield City Airport has a huge amount going for it – very close to the centre of a big conurbation, perfect for time-conscious business travelers and, in the right hands, could be highly successful; · There are private organisations that have expressed an interested in buying and running the airport whose approaches have been ignored by the site’s owners; · Government policy is to support regionalized aviation; · Sheffield has plenty of sites suitable for business development (including 50 acres of Sheffield Business Park Phase 1 still undeveloped); why destroy a valuable piece of the local infrastructure that can never be replaced? · If Sheffield Airport is built upon and Robin Hood fails (or continues to only serve the holiday flight market), South Yorkshire will have no business aviation options, placing it at a massive strategic disadvantage and it will fail to attract the necessary inward investment to secure growth and jobs for the future; · The Sheffield City Region is presently in the third tier in aviation logistics terms, which means, for example, the major freight carriers cannot provide the same next-day service to the major American cities which is enjoyed by all other UK cities and most towns. The city region will continue to fall down the service league until it resolves its aviation accessibility conundrum; · The majority shareholder in the company that presently owns the airport site is Peel Airports. They came on the Sheffield scene promising: 1) To run Sheffield City Airport alongside Robin Hood Airport: (promise broken). then 2) To chop the runway in half for general aviation, building a business park on the remainder with thousands of jobs: (promise broken). then 3) To build a heliport with thousands of jobs on the remainder: (promise broken). then 4) To build a business park including a planning application for a new DHL depot with thousands of jobs: (promise broken, but sufficiently convincing to obtain planning permission for the airport runway to be dug up). now 5) The latest incarnation of the plan is the Blue Skies Business Park proposal but this time using taxpayers money to dig up the runway. If the company cannot afford £1.8 million to prepare the site then how are we expected to believe they can build a business park, other than by using yet more public money? · After being in South Yorkshire for over 10 years Peel has achieved nothing for Sheffield except a catalogue of broken promises. It has stripped assets from the region, the Sheffield economy has stood still whilst its competitors have moved forwards substantially. Neville Martin Development Manager Federation of Small Businesses fsb.org.uk Tel: 0114 261 7132 Mobile: 07917 628922
Posted on: Thu, 13 Jun 2013 16:37:07 +0000
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