Gloucester Airport runway plan ‘vital’
17.06.08
Managers at Gloucestershire Airport have said that jobs will go and revenue will drop if a development is blocked. They want permission to demolish two properties at each end of the runway to allow commercial traffic to continue operating within the safety guidelines.
Cheltenham Borough Council, which jointly owns the site with Gloucester City Council has approved the scheme. However, Gloucester City Council said a number of concerns had to be addressed and that discussions were continuing.
Those opposed to the development say the scheme will lengthen the runway, attracting more commercial planes and more noise and pollution. But airport director Mark Ryan said: ‘There is an easy option for us to shorten the runway, but in doing so we lose a lot of our high end - the corporate traffic. ‘That's not a great deal in terms of movement, it's only about 3%, but that 3% is actually about 30% of our revenue stream.’
The leader of Gloucester City Council, Paul James, said they were going to look at all the issues surrounding the scheme. He said: ‘[There is] the economic impact, environmental impact, we are dealing with public assets here, we're being asked to underwrite £1m of borrowing. We have very strong representations from the environmental lobby and it's only right we take each of those arguments and look at them closely.'
If Gloucester City Council does back the development, the airport would still need approval from its planning authority, Tewkesbury Borough Council.
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