Unsold airport costing councils nearly £3m a year

An airport is costing two councils nearly £3m a year, council chiefs have revealed.

Pressure is mounting to increase income and reduce costs at Gloucestershire Airport, which is jointly owned by Cheltenham Borough Council and Gloucester City Council.

The planned sale of the airport recently fell through after more than eight months of negotiations with preferred bidder Horizon Aero Group.

But it was also revealed on Monday that the annual operating loss at the Staverton site has increased from £1.4m to £2.7m since the site was first marketed with an asking price of £25m.

Officers also said Gloucester City Council would have received a total of £4.5m once the sale had gone through after all debts were paid off, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.

Council leader Jeremy Hilton told the council's overview and scrutiny committee that "nobody is to blame" for the failed sale.

"It is a very difficult and complicated site so we do know we have an exceptionally good data room if we were to put the airport back up for sale.

"But in the meantime, the short term objective is to keep the airport operational," he added.

Councillor Alastair Chambers told the meeting of reports the airport was now making a loss, and asked how much was being lost per year in comparison to before.

Andy Hearne, the city council's head of place, said at the start of the marketing process the loss was approximately £1.8m across the two councils, but this had increased to an estimated £2.7m.

Asked by Mr Chambers how much the failure to sell the airport has cost taxpayers in legal, consultancy, officer time and agents fees, Hilton described a "pretty modest" loss of around £150,000.

"You need to incur that cost to sell an asset as complicated as this one," he said, adding that it was not clear if the costs were expected to rise but efforts were being made to "drive down losses".

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