Leeds Bradford Airport is desperately trying to remove the cap that limits the number of flights allowed during the night at the airport. But we think Leeds City Council can stop them - so why aren't they taking action?
At first, Leeds City Council gave us one reason for not putting a stop to unlimited, unauthorised night flights at LBA. Then, in response to an email campaign from GALBA supporters, the Council gave a different reason but didn’t say if they still believe the original reason.
So we’re a bit confused about why the Council believes it can’t do anything. We’ve asked for a meeting with their lawyers and ours so we can get to the bottom of things. But the Council hasn’t agreed to that.
Removing the night flight cap would mean unlimited flights at night and a truly round-the-clock operation. The airport wants this to happen because it means that the airlines using LBA can fly their planes 24-hours a day and fit in more journeys per plane. That would make them more profit.
To get an idea of the lengths the airport will go to make this happen, see below for a list of attempts to change the planning rules since 2020.
It is a relentless merry-go-round of applications, resubmissions and appeals, with only one end-goal in sight – removal of the night flight cap!
In addition to the time taken up by the under-resourced Planning Department in Leeds City Council, consider the cost to the council tax payer to process and assess all these applications.
Citizens of Leeds – you are paying for this!
| 2020 | Application: New terminal, changes to night flight regime – withdrawn 2021 prior to Public Inquiry. |
| 2022 | Summer night flight cap exceeded – Breach of Condition Notice served on LBA. |
| 2023 / 2024 / 2025 | Summer night flight cap exceeded – no action taken. |
| 2023 | CLEUD (Certificate of Lawful Use) applications submitted and rejected due to poor data. |
| 2024 | CLEUD applications resubmitted seeking immunity for flying latest generation planes and delayed flights. |
| 2024 | CLEUDs refused by LCC. |
| 2024 | LBA appealed CLUEDs decision. |
| 2025 | Public Inquiry – LBA lost all material CLEUDs – inspector agreed latest generation planes are indeed unlawful according to the current operating conditions. |
| 2025 | LBA appealed PI decision – currently waiting permission to go ahead. |
| 2025/6 | LBA s73 pre-application to change operating conditions – discontinued. |
| 2026 | 3rd CLEUD submitted seeking immunity for flying anything below 87dB. |
Leeds City Council can put a stop to all of this by approving the unauthorised flights
For LBA’s plan to work, it requires those planes which are currently flying without permission (100s of them) to remain unauthorised. Bizarrely, that would mean they don’t count towards the night flight cap.
At the same time, LBA is applying for immunity from prosecution for flying unauthorised planes.
But Leeds City Council has a provision built into the Planning Permission to approve any plane that is currently flying without authorisation. Approval would make them lawful and that would mean those planes would have to be counted towards the night flight cap.
This provision has always been there since the conditions were agreed and signed off by the airport and the Council when the planning permission was first granted in 1993. But it has never been used by the Council.
The planning permission works like this:
Condition 6
During the night-time period, (2300-0700), no aircraft movements shall take place other than by:-
- Landings by aircraft classified as falling within Quota Count 0.5 and 1 …
- Departures by aircraft classified as falling within Quota Count 0.5 …
- Aircraft which are approved by the Local Planning Authority and have, taking account of maximum take-off weights and stage lengths, an EPNdB value of not greater than 90 on departure.
- Aircraft approved based on performance data collected at Leeds-Bradford Airport…[would require specialist measurement – not practical here]
- Exempt aircraft defined by UK NOTAM S45/1993.
This condition controls what can and can’t fly at LBA at night. It says nothing can fly, apart from those planes allowed by 6a to 6d. To show this graphically, the figures below show the allowed planes in green and disallowed in red.
Each plane is a assigned a QC label according to how much noise it makes and currently only QC0.5 and QC1 are permitted to fly. There is an exception for exempt planes which are very small and there are so few of them they are shown here for completeness only.
Condition 7 controls how many planes are allowed to fly at night and applies to those planes described in condition 6a to 6d. So as can be seen from the figure below, as long as the planes indicated by 6c are unapproved (shown in red) they are not included in the night-time cap in condition 7.
By simply approving the unauthorised planes using the provision in 6c, the Council makes them lawful (shown in green) and they are then included in the night flight cap as shown below.
This is the proper way the conditions were designed to work. The Planning Inspector at last year’s public inquiry stated that the purpose of condition 6c was exactly this: to provide a means to future-proof the planning permission to accommodate changes to the noise system as newer QC ratings come into operation.
The Legal Environment
To justify not taking action, Leeds City Council initially relied on legal advice which they said prevents the Council from pro-actively using its power in Condition 6c. They said they had to wait for an application from LBA.
GALBA’s legal advice is that on the plain reading of 6c, the Council can act unilaterally, without waiting for an application by LBA, to approve any plane under 90 decibels. You can read our legal advice here.
But recently, Leeds City Council has given a different reason for not taking action. They now say the Council has to wait until the airport’s new CLEUD application has been decided – but they don’t say if they still think they also have to wait for LBA to ask the Council to approve the unauthorised planes.