Airports & Travel

McLoughlin Planning was approached by Unity Land to support its efforts to promote the comprehensive redevelopment of Fairoaks Airport to provide a modern general aviation airport, with a focus on providing facilities for supporting sustainable aviation and the latest EV technology. This was as a direct competitor to other proposals which sought the redevelopment of the site for a new garden village in Surrey Heath.

Situated in the Green Belt, on the outskirts of Working and adjacent to Mclaren HQ, Fairoaks is an important general aviation airport in the south east. Its faciliites are delipidated and in need of urgent upgrading. Unity Land is commited to acquiring and heavily investing into the Airport to make it a modern facility, securing and promoting jobs in high skill positions in the aviation industry.

Working with John Steel QC (a leading aviation specialist) McLoughlin Planning is responsible for the preparation of the planning case for the development, working with the Unity Team (including 5Plus Architects, ARUP and specialist aviation consultants) to provide a conclusive case for the redevelopment of the site and demonstrate the clear economic benefits of development in an area where there is a high demand for commercial floorspace.

This has involved examining how the unique permitted development rights enjoyed by airports can be used to engineer a case for the wider redevelopment of the site and how planning policy at both local and national level, supports the retention of general aviation airports across the country.

The work is currently on-going.

McLoughlin Planning has been responsible for providing planning consultancy services to the airport across a number of issues.

Gloucestershire Airport is the country’s leading general aviation Airport with up to 80,000 flight movements per annum ranging and is an important part of the County’s economy. McLoughlin Planning has been responsible for providing planning consultancy services to the airport across a number of issues, including:

• Strategic Planning regarding the long-term potential of the airport’s landholdings, maximising its development potential for a wide variety of airport related and wider aviation industry related uses.
• Masterplanning of the Airport Property portfolio,
• Exercising Permitted Development Rights for new hangar and road infrastructure. This has culminated in a new hangar building, supported by the GFirst Local Enterprise Partnership.
• Securing the use of hangar buildings for a new Airline Pilot Training Academy and accommodation block for students.

Contextually, the airport is situated between Cheltenham and Gloucester and sits in the green belt. Development in this area is sensitive by its very nature. We have worked extensively with the airport and its infrastructure advisory team and local members to build a strong support base for the various proposals to ensure that they are successful.

McLoughlin Planning has been the Planning Consultant for Gloucestershire Airport for several years. As part of this, it has been involved in securing the necessary Consent for Skyborne’s operations allowing them to establish a Commercial Flight Training School at Gloucestershire Airport to meet the global demand for new Commercial Pilots.

The challenges faced by this project were:

• It was necessary to demonstrate that the use of a hangar as a Flight Training School fell within the definition of aviation-related development in the Town & Country Planning General Permitted Development (Order 2015).
• The Flight Training School was to be supported by an accommodation block for students.

The site is situated within the Green Belt where there are stringent planning controls on new development. As part of the company’s activities working on behalf of the Airport in terms of looking after its wider property portfolio, we were able to engineer a suitably positively planning policy context to allow Skyborne’s proposals to come forward as part of non-operational but aviation-related development.