Yes; Biggin cannot prevent Redhill getting an IAP but Biggin can and does object in every way possible to a hard runway.
And most people with a decent plane will not keep it at a grass airfield. So the dreadful airfield-political situation at Biggin (like, hangarage conditional on maintenance, and at this point I usually google for an image of a man bent over a barrel with somebody doing something to his back end) continues, well supported 
So it probably aren’t just property sharks who want to keep Plymouth shut, but they will be the only people working on it overtly.
Peter wrote:
same as Biggin Hill lobbies hard (quite openly) to keep Redhill as useless as possible (Redhill could do well because it already has ATC; a rare case in the UK, so Biggin cannot afford Redhill getting a proper runway and IAPs). Dog eat dog…
As far as I remember, the new simplifed IAP guide says that if you have the visual precedure similar to the proposed IAP, then all you need for IAP is just a very basic consultation, when Biggin will not have a say! All Redhill have to do is to change a visual circuit a year before that. :) Although that is valid only for the IAP, grass runway is to stay…
Road transport in SW England is really bad. It used to be totally horrid and today (with 4x more cars on the road than 40 years ago) it is almost totally horrid 
So an airport has potential commercial transport value, even if just for twin turboprops.
Plymouth is indeed a rather poor area but most of SW England is like that. It is, shall we say, not noted for wealth generation
One problem which is probably running under the table is that Exeter will be lobbying hard to keep Plymouth shut – same as Biggin Hill lobbies hard (quite openly) to keep Redhill as useless as possible (Redhill could do well because it already has ATC; a rare case in the UK, so Biggin cannot afford Redhill getting a proper runway and IAPs). Dog eat dog…
You’re of course right Graham, the planning system is FUBAR.
However, I can imagine that the lack of a decent airport goes a long way to discouraging businesses from considering a move to Plymouth.
@MedEwok the property development / land investment firms (i.e. SHG in this case) play a long game and are much smarter than the local councils, as well as having deeper pockets.
That Councillor’s statements seem a sure-fire way to risk him losing his position at the next local election, because local populations are not keen on their elected representatives with a pet agenda spending their money on ill-advised legal action.
It’s true that the developer basically needs the council’s permission to develop a housing estate, which is what they want to do for maximum profit, and that this is presently being denied. However they play a long game – times change, councils change, governments change, rules change, etc. Usually these guys get what they want, or something very close to it, in the end. Hence they continue to value the land at a price which reflects a housing development (that delta between value assuming permission that does not exist and the real value is know as ‘hope value’) and won’t sell to the council at a price which reflect a return to aviation use. The guy is presumably talking about trying to get Compulsory Purchase Order, which is pretty complex.
What that guy says is rubbish anyway. Plymouth might have the population to warrant a mixed-use GA airport like e.g. Oxford or Shoreham, but it’s never going to support anything that the general public use with scheduled traffic. It’s not a particularly wealthy area either.
I have zero knowledge of UK planning laws, but surely if the council designates the airport area as not allocated for the construction of housing, then the land value should drop accordingly and the ridiculously high sum the leaseholder expects for the property will be just that, ridiculous, and never be anywhere near the actual “market value”?
Yes indeed – they generally play a long game and are evidently content to wait and see if the political landscape changes.
But most have a limit somewhere, and then their business model forces an exit.
Graham wrote:
Plymouth City Council has pretty obviously taken a planning position similar to Stratford DC with respect to Wellesbourne airfield, i.e. “You are NEVER going to be allowed to build houses on that site so you might as well forget about it”.
Only developers don’t believe it and think, if we are sitting on it long enough that everything on it will be destroyed and unusable without “insane” money to make it happen, then they will cave in and open it for redevelopment. Bang.
We see the same story with different participants at Dubendorf Airbase, which was supposed to become the GA airport for Zurich. That land is worth literally gold. So three is fierce opposition not only from a noise part of usual suspects but mainly from people who see gazillions of money which could be made from the land if it ever was opened for sale. These guys have even more gazillions and are willing to wait a LOOONG time.
The only way something like this could be stopped is by introducing regulation that if a land is not used by the proprietor for its dedicated purpose for a number of years but someone else wishes to use it for this purpose, the use would be enforced either by forcing a lease onto it with a value determined by the council or it would even be taken away from the obstructor and sold on. This however is a very critical piece of legislation as it would question fundamental ownership laws. Yet, with infrastructure in mind, it would be feasible. But airports are not looked at as infrastructure by too many folks.
