When Doncaster councillors voted in November 2025 to borrow £57 million towards the reopening of Doncaster Sheffield Airport, the landlord's lease was not on the table. Elected members approved the borrowing without having read the contract that would determine whether the airport could operate, what rent the council would pay, on what terms the landlord could walk away, and with what consequences for the taxpayer if passenger numbers fell short.

The lease has since been leaked. The Mayor of Doncaster has confirmed, at full council, that it was withheld from members at the point of the vote. Both of those facts are public. What the document sets out is the terms on which the council accepted public liability.

Who the parties are

The landlord is a company within the Peel Group, the private property business whose holdings at Doncaster include the former airport site and substantial acreage adjacent to it. The tenant under the Superior Lease is the City of Doncaster Council. The lease is the instrument under which the reopening is meant to happen.

What the leaked document shows

Reports of the leaked lease have established a number of material terms. A base rent of £5 million a year begins in 2030, rising thereafter with RPI. That rent is payable whether or not the airport flies a single flight. Performance thresholds require 1.3 million passengers a year on average across years three to five of reopened operation, and 2.3 million a year across years eight to ten. If those thresholds are missed, the landlord holds the right to terminate. Break points fall at 2031 and 2036.

The lease also includes a turnover rent provision, under which the landlord takes a share of airport revenues. Those revenues include the grant funding contributed by public bodies. A company within the Peel Group is, on the reported terms, the designated energy supplier to the site, a second revenue line that runs alongside the rent.

Colliers Lease Advisory reviewed the document as part of the regional assurance process. Its reported conclusion was that the terms are very favourable to the landlord and that the structure is unusual. That is the professional description of a commercial specialist. The council has not, in public, disputed it.

The planning problem

The lease ties commercial consequences to planning outcomes. The council is the planning authority for the airport site and its environs. A lease that creates a financial incentive for planning decisions to fall one way rather than another compromises the independence of that authority. The council has one duty as planning authority. It has a competing commercial interest as lessee. The lease locates both on the same desk, and does not tell members how the tension is to be resolved.

What councillors were given instead

The Mayor's statement of 17 April 2026 listed the documents made available to members before the November 2025 vote. The schedule ran to twenty-five items. Item six was described as 'DSA Lease Advice'.

Advice about a lease is not the lease. A member of a council may be perfectly satisfied with a summary in ordinary course, but not when the summary is offered as a substitute for the contract, and not when the contract is the document that defines what the £57 million is buying. Members asked to commit long-term public borrowing against a private commercial counterparty are entitled to see the document that sets their exposure. That entitlement is not a technical one. It is the plainest form of democratic accountability.

Why it matters now

The scheme is not a rejection of the airport. The case for reopening Doncaster Sheffield Airport, properly made, is strong. The case for a £57 million borrowing decision taken without the lease in front of members is weak, and the withholding of the lease has itself now become part of the record. Once the lease was leaked, the question of whether members would have voted the same way with it in front of them moved from hypothetical to actual. No one, to date, has been asked.

A rescission motion has been filed. It does not cancel the reopening. It returns the decision to the chamber, on the document. If the terms are good, members will confirm the borrowing. If they are not, that is for members to weigh, not for officers to weigh for them.