Planning Court dismisses challenge to grant of development consent for reopening of Kent airport for freight

The High Court has rejected a challenge brought by a local campaigner against the reopening of Manston airport.

Manston, in Thanet, was a military airfield in both world wars and had limited use for passengers and freight until its closure in 2013.

Developer Riveroak Strategic Partners applied in 2018 under section 37 of the Planning Act 2008 for a development consent order to reopen Manston for freight.

This was granted in 2020 by the Secretary of State for Transport but quashed by the High Court in 2021.

Riveroak made some revisions to its application which was then granted in 2022 but that was challenged by campaigner Jennifer Dawes.

Mr Justice Dove has now rejected both grounds she argued, clearing the way for the next stage of the reopening process.

He said Ms Dawes’ first ground concerned the need for the development and the second related to climate change.

The main thrust of the latter was that the Secretary of State failed to reach a conclusion on the relevance of the sixth carbon budget and relied on the Decarbonising Transport Plan and the Jet Zero Strategy to conclude the development would have a neutral impact upon climate change “when those policy documents did not take any account of any activity at Manston”.

On the first ground, Dove J said: “In my judgment, when the briefing document and the draft letter are read as whole it is clear that the recommendation of the defendant's officials, which he adopted, was that the potential for airport capacity expansion elsewhere was something to which very little weight could be attached, and was not obviously material to the decision for the reasons relating to the uncertainties and contingencies upon which any expansion depended.

"It follows that I am not satisfied that the claimant has established that the defendant was advised he could not take additional airport capacity into account and it was irrelevant. Rather the briefing and draft decision presented to him, and which he accepted, set out that very little weight could be attached to capacity through applications which had yet to be brought forward on the basis that there was no certainty that any of them would materialise.”

That conclusion had been open to the Secretary of State and no illegality had occurred in his approach.

On the second ground, Dove J said this drew on advice from the Climate Change Committee to the Government in 2020 that there should be no net expansion of UK airport capacity unless the aviation industry was on track to sufficiently out-perform its net emissions trajectory and the additional demand could be accommodated.

Ms Dawes also argued that the jet zero strategy was based upon “general, aspirational and untested proposals and assumptions which do not provide any form of robust basis for decision making”.

Dove J said the Secretary of State had been “perfectly entitled to rely upon those newly adopted policies as a justification for his conclusion that there would be an acceleration of decarbonisation in the aviation sector so as to ensure that the targets for that sector and the legislated carbon budgets could be met without the direct limitation of aviation demand”.

Thanet District Council leader Rick Everitt said: “We note the court’s decision regarding the judicial review.

“Given the history of this matter, it is not immediately clear to us if this is the end of the development control order process. 

“RiverOak Strategic Partners will be well aware that there are other legal processes to complete before the airport is able to operate according to their proposals, including a number of consents required from the district council as the local planning authority.” 

Thanet said the site was safeguarded for airport-related uses and would address its decision on the order through an update of its local plan. 

RiverOak Strategic Partners welcomed the court’s ruling and said: “This is a highly significant and positive development towards our aim of turning Manston into a state of-the-art air freight hub underway and working to support the long-term economic development of east Kent.”

Mark Smulian