By Cllr Jason Charity, Reform UK, City of Doncaster Council
When Oliver Coppard starts writing attack posts about Doncaster councillors, you know the argument isn't going well. Labour has wheeled out the big guns because the substance isn't there. So let's deal with the substance.
I spent most of my career in international banking at a senior level. I have worked on major commercial deals. I know what poor risk allocation looks like when I see it, and I know the difference between a thousand pages of documentation and a well-structured deal. Those are not always the same thing.
My question for both mayors has been the same since January. If this arrangement is as sound as they claim, why was the lease withheld from the councillors asked to approve £57 million of borrowing?
Not overlooked. Not accidentally omitted from a briefing pack. Deliberately withheld. Mayor Jones confirmed that at full council, in her own words. The document governing revenue flows, termination rights, and risk allocation was not available to members when they voted in November 2025. It took a leaked copy, not proper disclosure, for councillors and the public to see what the terms actually were.
My concern was never what was in those 1,000 pages. It was what wasn't.
What the lease contains
The lease sets binding thresholds for passenger and freight. By March 2031, the airport must reach at least 1 million terminal passengers per year and 13,000 tonnes of freight. By March 2036, those figures rise to 2.3 million passengers and 25,000 tonnes. Both conditions must be met. Some commentary online has misread the clause as offering a choice between passenger and freight targets. The lease uses "and" throughout.
The Civil Aviation Authority's own forecast is 1.16 million passengers across ten years. That doesn't meet the 2031 threshold. Reaching 2.3 million by 2036 means roughly 35 to 40 flights a day and 6,500 people through the airport daily. All cargo moves by lorry, because there is no rail connection, so every tonne goes through Junction 3. On current independent projections, Peel's termination right is not a risk scenario. It is the base case.
Peel also takes 20% of the annual turnover. Supporters have argued that if the council sublets operations to FlyDoncaster, their revenue falls outside the Gross Turnover calculation. Schedule 3 of the lease sets out the Underletting Obligations, and those obligations require FlyDoncaster's revenue as under-tenant to be factored back into the rent calculations. The "avoidance of doubt" clause does not override Schedule 3. That analysis has been put forward publicly by people who have read the full lease. It has not been answered.
The lease also designates LEEP, a Peel company, as the site's energy supplier. Tenants are paying above-market rates. A direct commercial interest of Peel, embedded in the contract, was absent from every page of the briefing material that members received.
Whoever negotiated this lease on the public's behalf got almost every material point wrong. In any commercial organisation I have worked in, that outcome would have had consequences.
The planning approval that ended the council's leverage
The lease gives Peel the right to terminate if the council refuses planning permission for 1,000 or more homes near the airport. Planning committee members who voted on adjacent applications were not told their decisions were contractually connected to the lease.
Since the stage two planning application was submitted, 1,400 homes have been approved in the flight path.
Both mayors keep saying the lease will be renegotiated and the problematic terms will change. Consider what that claim requires. The council's only real negotiating position was the planning linkage. Refuse planning, and Peel stays at the table. Peel now has the approvals it needed. SYMCA and Doncaster are entering a renegotiation with nothing left to offer. Whatever leverage existed has been surrendered, and it was done before a single word of renegotiation began.
Mayor Coppard has made his £160 million of SYMCA funding conditional on renegotiation. He is confirming that the current terms are not acceptable, while simultaneously insisting the November decision was sound. Those two positions cannot both be true.
The private investor offer
A private consortium submitted a written offer of £150 million or more in private investment. Members were not told it existed. The Chief Executive, Damian Allen, dismissed it. His reason, as explained to me, was that he believed the lawyer representing the investors was not genuine.
I contacted the lawyer. He is a partner at a top London international law firm. The verification took minutes.
A private-sector offer of over £150 million was set aside without the basic step of establishing whether the legal representative was who he claimed he was. A Local Government Ombudsman complaint is live. Mediation has been formally proposed.
Mayor Coppard has also claimed he repeatedly offered to meet Reform UK. No such offer has ever been received, by either the group or me. If it exists, it can be sent in writing.
The council's commercial judgment
This is not the first time questions have been raised about the council's commercial decision-making. The council ran its markets at a loss of around £580,000 per year before eventually outsourcing them to a specialist operator. In 2020 it agreed a £910,000 bail-out of a private firm, a decision that attracted significant political and media criticism at the time.
Those are two examples, not a comprehensive indictment. But the pattern of behaviour visible in the DSA deal itself is more troubling than any historical example: a lease negotiated with no meaningful protections for the public, a £150 million private offer dismissed without basic verification, and the terms of a £57 million borrowing decision withheld from the members asked to approve it.
The question is not simply whether DSA can work in theory. It is whether this council, with this track record, under a lease structured firmly in the landlord's favour, and with no remaining negotiating leverage, is the right organisation to run a complex commercial airport with public money.
I am not confident it is.
The case for rescission
If Peel exercises its right to terminate, the council does not just lose an airport. Thirty years of South Yorkshire GainShare funding goes with it. The downstream fiscal exposure from that scenario is far larger than the £57 million headline. It has had almost no public scrutiny. At that point, Mayor Jones and Doncaster Council's Chief Executive will be in retirement and beyond accountability.
The case for rescinding the November decision is straightforward. Members should vote again, this time with knowledge of the lease, the risks properly set out, and the alternatives honestly assessed.
I want the airport open. I want it reopened on terms that are credible and genuinely in the interests of Doncaster residents. Asking for that is not opposition to the project. It is the minimum the public should expect from any decision of this scale.
The questions about this deal have not been answered. Doncaster deserves a decision made on the full picture.