Photo by Neil Terry
Photo by Neil Terry
Leeds City Council has awarded Leeds Bradford Airport a Certificate of Lawful Existing Use or Development (CLEUD). This decision does not allow unlimited night time flying but it does allow 941 additional night flights per year. We believe this is a legal error that must be put right - one way or the other...
We are pleased that Leeds City Council has ruled that Leeds Bradford Airport cannot fly an unlimited number of planes at night, as the result of the Council’s decision to award a Certificate of Lawful Existing Use or Development (CLEUD) to the airport. You can read more about LBA’s application here.
However, we strongly disagree with the Council’s view that LBA is allowed to fly an additional 941 planes a year at night. We have already sent a legal letter to the Council, asking them to reconsider this part of the decision and correct it. We are also exploring options to challenge the Council’s decision in the courts.
In practice, LBA will try to fly all of those additional 941 planes during the summer months, causing a big increase in noise and pollution. That would be bad news for local people, the air we breathe and the climate we all depend on.
GALBA’s updated legal advice is clear that the Council’s decision has made the aircraft covered by the CLEUD lawfully allowed to fly at night.
As a result, those aircraft must be counted towards the cap on the number of night flights – 4,000 per year, 2,800 in summer and 1,200 in winter. If LBA exceeds the cap, then Leeds City Council can – and should – take enforcement action against the airport.
The way a CLEUD works is that if you have been breaking the rules for 10 years, without getting caught, you get to carry on breaking the rules with immunity from prosecution. In this case, LBA had been flying aircraft at night that had never been approved for night time flying at all.
So the CLEUD simply makes those aircraft lawfully allowed to fly at night. Now that they are lawful, every night flight that they make has to be counted towards the annual cap of 4,000 night flights.
The figure of 941 just reflects the scale of LBA’s unlawful night flights in the past. This has no connection to the annual limit because all of those 941 flights need to be counted towards the cap.
The mistake the Council has made is to think that somehow these flights should not be counted at all. We hope they will put that mistake right very soon. If they don’t, we’ll consider taking them to court.
The correct interpretation of the way that planning conditions 6 and 7 work, following the CLEUD decision, is as follows...
Condition 6 lists all the types of aircraft that are lawfully allowed to fly at night. The Council’s decision has ruled that the aircraft covered by the CLEUD are now lawfully allowed to fly at night. Therefore they are part of Condition 6.
Condition 7 places limits on the total number of night flights that can be made by all the types of aircraft listed in Condition 6. The limits are 2,800 in summer and 1,200 in winter. These limits apply to all the aircraft covered by Condition 6, including those now approved by the CLEUD.
You can read GALBA’s updated legal advice here. Paragraph 22 explains how conditions 6 and 7 work together.
Leeds Bradford Airport is big enough already