Old Sarum Airfield: 'Thousands of livelihoods at risk'

Blanefield Aviation has one more shot at gaining permission to develop Old Sarum Airfield after an application to build up to 315 homes was turned down by Wiltshire Council on August 14.

The company, owned by Matthew Hudson and Grenville Hodge, became involved with the site 40 years ago with the intention of creating a flying club.

Read more: Plans to redevelop Old Sarum Airfield to be refused AGAIN

In 1990, Salisbury District Council wanted to build houses adjacent to the airfield and in 2007 this same council came to Mr Hodge and said his airfield “was making too much noise”.

(Image: Contributed)

This request sparked the long-running saga of determining Old Sarum Airfield’s future as Mr Hodge had to weigh up his options.

Either Wiltshire Council paid Mr Hodge £28m to buy and shut the airfield, aircraft continued to fly at a level of up to 90k movements annually or houses were built around the airfield and their income reinvested to make the site viable with less air traffic.

Read more: Campaigners celebrate as Old Sarum Airfield plans are rejected

In the meantime, the annual number of air movements was halved to around 35k to satisfy the council while roughly 1k homes were built in Old Sarum.

Fifteen years on, Blanefield Aviation has ploughed around £2m into the planning process while taking no returns and is still effectively at square one.

Mr Hodge’s first planning application was retracted after Wiltshire Council took more than two years to determine its outcome.

A second application, similar to the one submitted in 2023, was refused in 2015, despite being taken to appeal, on grounds of heritage conservation.

The most recent application was unanimously rejected by Wiltshire Council’s Strategic Planning Committee on August 14, much to the disappointment of Mr Hodge.

Convinced the “terrific scheme” to develop the site is “still the best option”, Mr Hodge said: “Every time we do this, it costs us an absolute fortune and so we haven’t done it blindly.

“If Wiltshire Council is being thoughtful, I’m sure they would consider it the best option. And I think it is the best option locally.

“In every respect, this is an area which is deemed suitable for development subject to meeting criteria because it is in a historically sensitive area.

“The whole point of having a planning system is to carefully inquire whether the planning applications meets all the planning requirements and in terms of every single respect we meet all those things.”

The Government set a 10 per cent biodiversity net gain target for developers, Wiltshire Council upped this to 20 per cent and Mr Hodge’s plans would increase biodiversity by 85 per cent according to Natural England’s calculation.

Mr Hodge is also promising unprecedented access to and through the airfield with footpaths connecting Persimmon homes to Longhedge.

He continued: “So there is an impact on the local people and we believe those impacts are positive.

“Some people who just happen to live next door will of course be impacted and I understand that. But we can’t have a few people who live next door to a development just put a veto on good quality, positive developments taking place.”

Alternative would “destroy the livelihoods of 10k people”

Old Sarum Airfield would be more profitable if it focused entirely on flying and scrapped plans to build houses, Mr Hodge confirmed.

However, in a bid to be a “responsible business”, Mr Hodge would prefer to build houses to sustain the site.

“If we fly, we will destroy the livelihoods of 10k people around the airfield,” he said.

Mr Hodge would encourage aviation-minded people to occupy the proposed houses closest to the airfield in area A in order to create “a real aviation-viable community”.

“That’s the whole purpose of building the new facilities – so people can come and treat it as a club and enjoy the whole environment of being around an airfield.”

Wiltshire Council allocated land north east of the airfield which was deemed suitable for 350 homes in this year’s Local Plan.

Mr Hodge claims what he is proposing is “no different” other than his plans provide a “huge benefit for improved conservation, massively improved biodiversity, great benefits for connectivity” and the “great prize” of reduced flying as to “not blight the houses”.

If the planning appeal is unsuccessful, the airfield will return to a level of flying upwards of 60k movements annually which, in the peak of summer, could result in aircraft overhead “every two or three minutes”.

This could be detrimental to Wiltshire Council’s plans for housing in Old Sarum as it would require the council to conduct an aviation noise analysis – something which was not required for Longhedge.

When the airfield was operating at near-full capacity, Mr Hodge attended a quarterly flying forum where he received a “massive” number of complaints about the noise.

Residents have enjoyed 15 years of quietness with the odd plane dropping parachutists above the site but this could soon change to up to 90k annual air movements without any further permission required.

Mr Hodge anticipates this drastic change would result in an enormous amount of uproar.

Famous First World War hangar could be saved

Hangar 3, a Grade II listed “national asset” next to the airfield, has fallen into disrepair and partially collapsed due to Storm Isha last year.

If Mr Hodge’s plans are approved, he claims he would pay the £3.3m required to restore the hangar to its former glory.

Hangar 3 has partially collapsed. (Image: Sue Newman)

Mr Hodge doesn’t believe starting work to restore Hangar 3 would “make any difference to the people who are objecting” to his airfield planning application. Also, he doesn’t have the funds to repair the hangar.

“It is not viable to repair the hangar and that’s been one of the problems all along,” he said.

“We’d spend £3.3m repairing a hangar which should have virtually zero value. Unfortunately these hangars, although they’re a huge national asset, in terms of business they’re a liability and cost a lot to maintain.”

Had Mr Hodge continued to use the airfield for a “very substantial amount of flying” from 2007, he would have been able to afford to repair the hangar.

“Because we cut the flying, we weren’t able to do massive repairs on the hangar,” added Mr Hodge.