RAF bases to be turned into airports

PRIVATE developers have discovered a way of opening extra airports by the back door by snapping up former military airfields for conversion to commercial use. The Ministry of Defence has put 25 properties up for sale, including at least four that developers want to turn into airports - some in areas of natural beauty or scientific interest.

The sell-off provides the property men with a golden opportunity, because the fields come with existing runways, making it much easier to secure planning permission than if they had to start from scratch. But for people living in areas made tranquil by the departure of the RAF, the result will be a rapid increase in air traffic - and all the noise that goes with it.

Friends of the Earth warns that the developers have moved in because the Government has no comprehensive policy on air traffic and aviation. "Developers are exploiting the lack of government policy by buying up old RAF bases and turning them into new regional airports," said Simon McRae, a transport campaigner. "Communities which for decades have had no peace for reasons of national security are now finding they are getting no peace from the peace dividend."

He called on John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister and Transport Secretary, to intervene and put the plans on hold until the Airports White Paper is published. "Anyone living near a disused RAF base should contact their council immediately to make sure no one wants to build an airport near them," added Mr McRae.

Britain's airports have historically been sited on former airfields. Both Heathrow and Stansted were once military bases. Plans for new commercial airports on military airfields include:

t Bentwaters in Suffolk. Suffolk Business Airport and Seabrook Holdings want to establish Anglia International Airport, carrying 250,000 passengers a year within a decade, in an area of outstanding natural beauty.

t Finningley near Doncaster, a former RAF nuclear bomber base. Peel Holdings is "preferred purchaser" of the site for conversion into a long and medium-haul regional airport.

t Northolt in west London. Used by the Royal Family. Stagecoach Aviation is offering to invest pounds 40m if given control, although it has not yet made a formal proposal to expand the small-scale civilian side into a feeder airport for nearby Heathrow.

t Manston in Kent, a former Battle of Britain airfield. Wiggins Group is the preferred bidder for the whole airfield site, which has been run as a joint MoD/civilian airfield for 10 years. It would not need planning permission for terminals, only for new runways.

t Plans by ADL, a joint venture of the airports operator BAA and Kingspark Developments, to convert RAF Alconbury in Cambridgeshire into an air freight operation were dropped after public opposition. ADL is now seeking to build a road and rail freight distribution centre. It has said that future plans for a freight airport would need separate planning consent. It is adjacent to sites of special scientific interest.

t The House of Commons Transport Committee has said the Redhill aerodrome in Surrey could be developed as a similar third terminal for Gatwick.

The Aviation Environment Federation said sites that fulfilled strategic defence needs were not "necessarily ideally placed" to meet demand for regional air services.

The Government has promised a white paper on aviation but six studies into regional airports, including demand for them and their environmental implications are also being prepared.

A spokeswoman for the Department for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR), said: "The Government wants to encourage the growth of regional airports to meet local demand for air travel. The aim is to maximise the use of regional airports to relieve pressure on congested airports in the South East and to reduce the need for road journeys." The Government's policy would ensure individual airports were not considered in isolation from the national network and would ensure proper integration with public transport, she added.

The Government had already decided to give certain council-owned airports more freedom to borrow and said the development of six other sites would shape the future direction of policy. This could mean expansion at Manchester, Newcastle, Leeds/Bradford and Norwich. Other local airports reported to be drawing up expansion plans include Southend, Bournemouth International, and Sheffield City.

The White Paper comes at a time when passenger numbers are rising. BAA expects the number of passengers using the London airports, 95 million a year, to double by 2015, while the number of people using British airports will rise from 130 million people a year now to up to 378 million.