Reform’s civil war over plans to plough £190m of public money into reopening a “Red Wall” airport has resulted in death threats, resignations, and the risk of a council going bankrupt – ahead of a key meeting next week over the project’s future.
Doncaster Sheffield airport (DSA) closed in 2022 after landowner Peel Group determined it was no longer commercially viable.
Labour leaders have backed a plan to reopen it using taxpayer cash despite warnings from experts the airport may not be financially viable. They include the veteran mayor of Doncaster City Council, Ros Jones, and the Mayor of South Yorkshire, Oliver Coppard.
Now, Reform UK councillors are threatening to “kill off” the project by rescinding their approval of a £57m loan needed to get the airport open by 2028.
Nigel Farage’s party, which holds a majority on Doncaster council, is holding a crunch vote on Monday which would reverse a decision they made in November to approve the loan.
Leaders have drafted the motion despite warnings from council officers it would likely be terminal to the project and leave Doncaster council exposed to liabilities that could put it in danger of needing to issue a section 114 notice.
This signals an effective bankruptcy and means local authorities cannot incur any further spending.
More than 130,000 people have signed a petition calling for DSA to be reopened, and union leaders at the GMB and TUC have organised a protest outside Doncaster’s Civic Offices ahead of the meeting.
‘The atmosphere is very toxic, it’s horrible’
It is the latest twist in what has become an increasingly bitter battle over the future of DSA, which was first opened as an RAF airfield in 1915.
Last week Reform leaders reported a post in a prominent Facebook group to police after it allegedly called for the party’s councillors to be “killed”.
An insider at Doncaster Council told The i Paper: “The atmosphere is very toxic, it’s horrible.”
Nigel Farage’s Reform UK control Doncaster council, but the city has a Labour Mayor, Ros Jones (Photo: Joe Giddens/PA)Reform holds 35 of the 55 seats on Doncaster council following last year’s elections, and the party’s original position was that it supported Labour’s airport proposals, which included plans to renegotiate the lease with Peel Group.
However, The i Paper understands there have always been strong misgivings about the deal within Reform which resulted in former leader Guy Aston standing down last year to be replaced by councillor Craig Ward.
The situation became further inflamed when the alleged terms of the 125-year lease, signed by Doncaster Mayor Jones in 2024, were leaked on social media. These included rights for Peel to terminate the lease if the airport failed to attract enough passengers or if the council failed to agree certain planning decisions.
Reform councillors now say they were not made aware of these terms in the lease at the time they approved the £57m loan – which Labour say is required to get the airport up and running but will be paid back through separate funding and airport revenues.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves has already released £30m for the airport, and South Yorkshire Combined Authority has approved a further £160m, subject to the lease being renegotiated.
Reform’s first attempts to hold an “extraordinary meeting” over the airport deal ended in farce when councillors claimed their motion had been deliberately reworded without their consent by council officers.
Ward later conceded he had not properly read messages he had been sent, but the spat resulted in threats of legal action exchanged between Reform and chief executive of Doncaster council Damian Allen. who had faced accusations from Reform over the reworded motion.
Labour is to invest at least £190m of public money into the reopening of Doncaster Sheffield airport (Photo: Christopher Furlong/Getty)In recent weeks, Nigel Farage and his deputy Richard Tice have also stepped into the fray, backing their councillors’ position and calling Labour’s current deal with Peel a “financial disaster for taxpayers in Doncaster”.
The pair say any deal should involve the council obtaining the freehold of the airport, and that his party would support using a compulsory purchase order (CPO) if necessary.
Labour argues that Peel has previously refused to sell the freehold, and that any attempt at a CPO would be likely to take years and result in a difficult court battle that the council would be unlikely to win, having previously indicated it would accept a lease.
‘Farage doesn’t give a sh*t’
A Reform insider in Doncaster told The i Paper they were bemused by the sudden interest from Farage and Tice, claiming that the party leadership had previously ignored requests for support on how to handle the airport saga.
“When we were first elected [in 2025] we were abandoned by the leadership, we got nothing,” they claimed. “Farage doesn’t give a shit.”
The dispute between Labour and Reform is likely to intensify after Farage’s party took control of Barnsley Council – one of the five members of South Yorkshire’s Combined Authority – on Friday.
The i Paper understands that while the changes are unlikely to give Reform the power to unravel the airport project entirely, it could make Mayor Coppard’s decision-making more difficult.
Mayor Jones, who was elected on a promise to have the airport open by spring 2026, says that Reform councillors have always been able to view the terms of the lease, although The i Paper understands this was on condition of signing a confidentiality agreement that prevented them from discussing it in public.
Jones has called on Reform not to go through with their threat of rescinding the loan, writing in an open letter: “The motion is not about scrutiny. It is about using a procedural rule purely for political purposes.”
Reform has been contacted for comment. A spokesman said previously: “Last May, Reform UK stood on a platform to reopen Doncaster Airport. That’s precisely what our councillors voted in favour of. We will now hold the Labour Mayor’s plan to account and ensure she delivers a properly governed and efficiently-run airport that serves the interests of local taxpayers.”
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