Doncaster Sheffield Airport: when Reform's flagship pledge met its lease
I am writing this as a Greater Lincolnshire constituent and the East Lindsey Green Party's named communications officer. The party's local communications is done as a three-person team; the named-officer title is procedural rather than hierarchical. The Greater Lincolnshire mayor and candidate vetting record is at /lincolnshire-mayor/. The wider Reform-in-power record across English councils is at /reform-in-power/. This piece touches on politically contested ground while the author has a disclosed political affiliation; the framing is deliberately narrow so readers can weigh primary sources themselves rather than rely on my characterisation of them.
The lease clause that changes the financial picture
The most consequential fact in this story is in the financial terms of the Doncaster Sheffield Airport Superior Lease, which the Yorkshire Post obtained and reported on in January 2026, and which the councillors who in November 2025 voted to approve a £57m borrowing facility to finance the airport's reopening had not been shown when they voted. The lease provides for a £5m annual base rent payable to airport freeholder Peel Group, a potential 20% turnover rent on top of the base rent, and break clauses favouring Peel if passenger targets are not met.
The combination matters because turnover rent and profit rent behave very differently. A profit-rent share gives the freeholder a stake in the operation's success without exposing the operator to a fixed cost during ramp-up. A turnover-rent share gives the freeholder revenue from gross income before costs, which means the freeholder takes its cut whether the operation is profitable or not, and the public borrowing that funds the operation in its early years is paying down debt while simultaneously funding the freeholder's revenue stream. The break clauses favouring Peel if passenger targets are not met then provide an exit for the freeholder if the targets prove unrealistic, while the council remains liable for the borrowing it has taken on.
This is the lease the council's £57m borrowing facility was approved to support, and it was approved without councillors having seen it.
How the situation arose
Doncaster Sheffield Airport closed in November 2022 after Peel Group, the freeholder, decided the airport operation was no longer commercially viable under the existing lease arrangements and chose not to renew. The closure removed an asset that employed several hundred people directly and several thousand more in supply chains across South Yorkshire and the East Midlands. The regional economic loss was substantial and visible.
Reopening the airport became a marquee local campaign through 2023 and 2024. Save DSA, a campaign group led by Mark Chadwick, kept the issue politically live. Reform UK adopted the reopening as a flagship policy commitment for the May 2025 local elections, alongside the Labour and Conservative parties. The May 2025 elections delivered a Reform majority on City of Doncaster Council while Labour retained the mayoralty under Mayor Ros Jones, creating a split-leadership council that has been placed under Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government active monitoring as of November 2025 following formal escalation by the Chief Executive.
In November 2025 the council approved the £57m borrowing facility to finance the airport's reopening. The vote was carried with Reform and Conservative support. A separate decision committed the council to the operating-company structure that would in turn enter into the Superior Lease with Peel Group. In January 2026 the Yorkshire Post reported on the leaked Superior Lease, revealing that councillors had not been shown the underlying financial clauses when they approved the borrowing.
Reform and Conservative councillors moved to rescind the £57m. The decision was scheduled for an extraordinary council meeting on 11 May 2026.
The political response
Reform UK's deputy leader on the council, Cllr Jason Charity, has publicly described the deal as "fundamentally flawed", citing the £5m base rent, the 20% turnover rent, and the Peel-favouring break clauses as the reasons. The framing has been consistent across his published comments: the financial fundamentals of the lease, not the principle of reopening the airport, are the basis for rescinding the borrowing.
Mayor Ros Jones (Labour) has publicly stated that rescinding the borrowing would "kill the airport project". She has also addressed the Compulsory Purchase Order route that Reform UK figures at national level have raised separately, stating that CPO was "already off the table" because the council itself had previously looked at it. Her published wording: "Once the lease was offered, CPO won't achieve it and it'd be five to seven years anyway." She has also stated that the lease agreement signed with Peel "effectively killed off any chance of a successful CPO", and that "Peel refused our offer to buy the freehold of the airport site, and any CPO would have been strongly challenged, taken years, with no guarantee of success and paying compensation costs in the eventuality of CPO being refused." Save DSA campaign leader Mark Chadwick has characterised the rescindment move as "reckless".
Energy Secretary Ed Miliband (Labour, Doncaster North) has publicly criticised Reform's position. His direct quote on the record:
I think what's really bad about this is that Reform went into the mayoral election saying they supported it. They went into the election as supporters of the airport, and now they're trying to kill it.
That is a sitting Cabinet minister attacking the local Reform leadership on a campaign promise made twelve months earlier, with the public record now showing the gap between the campaign position (we will reopen the airport) and the in-power position (we will rescind the funding mechanism for reopening the airport). The political exposure for Reform on this is unusually direct because the same councillors who approved the borrowing in November are now leading the move to rescind it in May, against the same lease whose existence and financial terms have been public since January.
Three Reform positions on the same airport
The political response from Reform UK across its different voices over the same period reveals a notable internal incoherence. Three distinct positions are publicly on the record from three different party figures, each addressed to a different audience and none of them deliverable on the 11 May vote timetable.
The local-council position, voiced by Cllr Jason Charity as Reform deputy leader on Doncaster Council, is to rescind the £57m borrowing facility because the underlying lease is "fundamentally flawed". This is the position with actual mechanism behind it: the 11 May vote can deliver the rescindment outcome.
The party-leader position, voiced by Nigel Farage on BBC Radio Leeds, is to keep the airport reopening on the table but to redo the deal so that the council acquires the freehold from Peel before any reopening proceeds. Farage's published wording: "We want this airport open but the deal that is currently proposed would be a disaster for taxpayers in Doncaster because the council, under this deal, is not getting the freehold." And separately, on the conditional path forward: "the council in the deal must get the freehold. If it gets the freehold then we can negotiate with other people to be providers." This position requires Peel Group to agree to a freehold transfer. Mayor Jones has stated on the public record that the council previously offered to buy the freehold and that Peel refused.
The deputy-leader position, voiced by Richard Tice (Reform UK deputy leader and MP for Boston and Skegness) to the Yorkshire Post, is that a future Reform UK government would acquire the freehold by Compulsory Purchase Order. Tice's published wording: "We're buying the freehold, one way or the other." This position requires both a Reform UK parliamentary majority that does not currently exist and a Reform UK national government willing to deploy CPO powers against Peel. Mayor Jones has already publicly stated that the CPO route is mechanically unavailable from the council's current position, as set out above.
The three positions are subtly different and they do not converge into a single deliverable plan. Charity's position has local mechanism behind it but ends the airport reopening project Reform campaigned on. Farage's position requires Peel to agree to a freehold transfer Peel has already refused. Tice's position requires a parliamentary majority Reform does not have and central-government powers the council cannot deploy. The 11 May vote will resolve only the first of these. The other two remain as rhetoric on a national-political surface that the local mechanism cannot reach.
The Knight conflict of interest
A separate but linked story involves Cllr David Knight (Reform UK), City of Doncaster Council. In autumn 2025, Cllr Knight and Cllr Rachel Reed (also Reform, then deputy leader of the council) registered a private company called Fly Doncaster (Auxiliary Services) Ltd via Companies House. The company name was substantially similar to a company the council itself was preparing to register for the operation of the planned reopened airport.
At the time, Cllr Knight sat on the Overview and Scrutiny Management Committee (OSMC), the body responsible for scrutinising the airport reopening plans and the financing structure. He also chaired the Health and Adult Social Care Overview and Scrutiny Panel.
When the existence of Fly Doncaster (Auxiliary Services) Ltd became known, the Reform UK group on the council acted. Cllr Knight was removed from the OSMC and from his chairing role on the health and adult social care panel, and lost the Reform whip in October 2025. Cllr Reed resigned as deputy council leader but retained her status as a Reform councillor; she also resigned her directorship at Fly Doncaster.
Reform UK group leader Cllr Guy Aston issued a public statement that Cllr Knight's decision to establish the company without consultation had caused reputational damage and placed the group's work under unnecessary strain.
On 18 December 2025 Cllr Knight was reinstated to the Reform UK group on the City of Doncaster Council website "pending a formal review". At the time of writing, Fly Doncaster (Auxiliary Services) Ltd remains registered as active on Companies House.
Cllr Knight has been the subject of a separate controversy involving public comments about children with special educational needs and disabilities. He suggested in public comments that SEND children were "trained to comply" with assessment criteria by their parents. His private transport company, which had been contracted to provide school taxis, ended that contract following the comments.
The conflict-of-interest case sits underneath the wider DSA story because the body Cllr Knight was removed from (the Overview and Scrutiny Management Committee) was the body responsible for scrutinising the airport plans and the financing structure his private company was registered to be in a position to benefit from. The £57m borrowing was approved while the OSMC was operating without his presence. The rescindment vote on 11 May will be debated in a council whose Reform group has already had to remove a member for an airport-related conflict, reinstate him pending review, and continue to govern alongside an unresolved Companies House registration.
The structural question for 11 May
The vote on 11 May 2026 is procedurally a vote on whether to rescind the £57m borrowing facility. Substantively it is a vote on whether City of Doncaster Council is able to govern itself in the configuration that emerged from the May 2025 elections.
The councillors who will vote on rescindment are facing a choice between three bad options. Voting against rescindment leaves in place a borrowing facility that backs a lease whose financial terms the same councillors had not seen when they approved the borrowing. Voting for rescindment ends the airport reopening that was a flagship campaign commitment for both Reform and Labour at the May 2025 elections, and which Reform's deputy leader on the council has publicly committed to delivering. Voting to defer pending a renegotiation of the underlying lease with Peel relies on Peel agreeing to renegotiate, which is not a position Peel has signalled.
The MHCLG active-monitoring status of the council is the institutional acknowledgement that governance has reached the point where central government is paying attention. Active monitoring is not formal intervention. It is the step before it. Whether the 11 May vote, and the political conduct around it, moves the council toward formal intervention or away from it is one of the things the meeting will reveal.
The pattern
Doncaster Sheffield Airport is a single high-profile case, but it sits within a wider pattern documented in /reform-in-power/. Across English councils since the May 2025 elections, Reform UK candidates won seats on campaign commitments their groups have not been able to deliver in office, with the gap between the campaign position and the in-power position becoming visible within twelve months of taking power. The DSA case has higher financial stakes than most because of the £57m public borrowing, more local visibility because of the airport's regional economic role, and a more direct named-individual conflict-of-interest story attached because of Cllr Knight. The structural pattern, though, is the same.
11 May is the next watch date. This piece will be updated after the vote with a reference to the outcome and the political response to it.