SOUTH YORKSHIRE'S MAYOR, OLIVER COPPARD, SPEAKING ON THE DECISION TO REOPEN DONCASTER SHEFFIELD AIRPORT

Published 9 September 2025 at 4:15pm

We. Are. Reopening. DSA. 

We are cleared for take-off.  

Today, alongside colleagues from Barnsley, Sheffield, Rotherham – and of course – Doncaster, I have proudly taken the decision to fund the reopening of Doncaster Sheffield Airport and the development of a world leading sustainable aviation and advanced manufacturing hub, here at Gateway East. 

I promised to do everything I could to reopen DSA when it was closed in November 2022, and when I first stood for election three years ago, I promised to invest to create an advanced manufacturing innovation corridor that stretches from Sheffield to Doncaster Sheffield Airport. 

Today I have kept those promises.  

I want to explain the decision I have taken today in more detail, but first, I’d like to say thank you to some people. 

Most importantly, thank you to the people and communities of Doncaster and South Yorkshire. 

I know the process to get to today has had its ups and downs, and been frustrating to some, but the decision we have taken today is a result of your patience, your commitment, and your unwavering support for this project, and for DSA. 
    
The journey to this point over the last three years has – understandably – attracted a huge amount of attention. 

I have not always been able to be as unambiguously positive, as clear, or as upfront as I would have liked to have been, sometimes because it has helped to strengthen our negotiating position, sometimes for legal or commercial reasons, and sometimes because I didn’t know if we would be able to get to today. 

But across Doncaster and South Yorkshire, through all those ups and downs, from business leaders to individual local people, you never lost interest or faith. 

You have pushed this project forward. 

I know some people have questioned my commitment to reopening DSA. I hope the decision I have taken today repays the faith and commitment you have shown, and makes clear that we have listened and we have acted in response to your hopes, your ambitions for yourselves, your families, for Doncaster and for South Yorkshire, and your desire for us to Save DSA; to create the People’s Airport. Your voices have been in every room we have ever been in, taking this project forward to this point.

In that same vein, I’d also like to thank some key campaigners, chief amongst them, Mark Chadwick. Mark was the man who sprang into action when DSA was under threat, powering the original airport petition past 100,000 signatures. 

He’s become a social media manager, an influencer, a podcast host, a mediator, a community leader, and an aviation geek. Mark, thank you for all your hard work and your never-ending enthusiasm.

Thank you to our brilliant local MP for the airport, Lee Pitcher, for all the work he has done in public and behind the scenes in Parliament, and the same goes for Sally Jameson, Ed Miliband and John Healey for their constant support. And thank you, even, to the former MP for Don Valley Nick Fletcher. Even when we disagreed on the means, we agreed on the ends. I know that even when his government did not back him, he was always fighting for DSA in his own unique way. 

On that note I’d also like to offer a special thank you to this government and to Rachel Reeves in particular for her personal interest in DSA, because she believes in us and our potential to grow the economy in South Yorkshire through this project. 

And to Heidi Alexander, her predecessor Louise Haigh, the former Aviation Minister Mike Kane, and of course Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner, all of whom have also been steadfast and vocal in their support as we have built the case to commit this funding to DSA. 

I’d like to thank the Leaders of South Yorkshire’s local councils – my fellow members of the MCA board – and particularly, of course, Ros Jones. This was a unanimous decision in no small part because of the passion of her argument over the last three years. 

I’ve never known anyone so focused on or committed to a single project; whether we’ve been talking about pot-holes or post-19 skills, Ros has never failed to remind me and the other members of the Board, of the central importance of DSA, and her vision for the future of Doncaster.   

And finally I’d like to thank my team at the MCA who have put in endless, endless amounts of work to build the case for this project, to Gareth, Clare, Jade, Laurie, Ed, Rebecca, Tom, Katharine and our former Chief Exec, Martin. It may be me giving this speech, for reasons you will know all too well, but this is your success. Thank you.  

Because getting to today was never guaranteed, certainly not in this time-frame.
 
Last weekend, I looked at what has happened to some of the other airports in the UK that have been closed in the last few years. 

Plymouth, closed in 2011 and remains closed. Manston, closed in 2014 and remains closed. And of course, Sheffield Airport, closed in 2002 and of course, never reopened. 

There was never anything inevitable about us getting to this point today.  

Here, just 23 months after DSA was closed, we have taken the decision to commit £159.9 million to reopen it next year, with freight operations in 2027 and commercial flights and a fully operational airport by 2028. 

My ambition throughout this process has always been to not just reopen DSA but to make it a thriving regional airport, alongside a world-leading sustainable aviation and advanced manufacturing hub here at Gateway East. A plan for the long-term. 

But I would like to better define what success looks like. 

Because when it comes to this project, success does not, cannot, simply be reduced to a line on a profit and loss spreadsheet. Success cannot be measured by passenger numbers alone. 

Let me be clear, we have today committed to the long-term funding of DSA because of its strategic value to South Yorkshire, because of this project’s unique ability to drive jobs and growth, to return money back into the economy, and to attract investment into the wider Gateway East site and across South Yorkshire.     
My job is not that of a private investor. I have a different role, to take a longer-term and wider view. 

And my measure of success is still simple; does this funding create jobs and growth and opportunity for people in Doncaster and across South Yorkshire, in a way we want, and in a way we can afford? On the basis of what we know now, the answer is simply, yes. 

And from my perspective, and position, that is the question that matters above all else. 

I am not here to maximise the direct financial returns to the MCA or to simply look at a profit and loss column. 

While my job is of course to be a proper steward of taxpayer’s money, I am also here to invest the public funds we have available, to create a better future for our communities; to build a bigger, better economy with jobs and growth in the industries of the future for the next generation; and to invest in opportunities that restore the pride, purpose and prosperity of South Yorkshire. 

In the same way we invest every year in the Supertram network, the buses, the skills system, or to improve the health of our communities, here we are committing to a long-term investment in a project which promises to grow the economy of our region, at scale and at pace.  
 
I do not shy away from the complexity or scale of this challenge. This will be an investment for the long-term. We will be investing in the airport until 2050. Building South Yorkshire Airport City into a central, vital hub for jobs, growth and opportunity in our region and across the North. That is not without risk, I know. No project of this scale ever is.

But that is why we have done the work we have over the last number of months, so we could understand every element of this project, the challenges and the opportunities, and take the decision we have today in full possession of those facts. 

We are committing to an investment of nearly £160 million today on that basis. 

Because the scale of the opportunity here is unique in South Yorkshire. 

I know some people have said we should use this money to invest somewhere else, in something else. Even if we wanted to, there are simply no other projects of this size or scale available to us at this moment, no other comparable investment that offers us the same strategic opportunity or potential for jobs and growth. 

I know some people have said we should turn this site into housing, or a logistics park, but the market has not responded to similar opportunities elsewhere in South Yorkshire, and there is no reason to believe this site would unlock investment in a way those sites have failed to do.  

I know some people have said we should not invest in an airport or aviation, because of its impact on the climate. Of course, I have sympathy with those concerns. But I also know there is no future for our society or our economy that does not include flying for holidays, to see friends and family, or for business. 

There is no doubt aviation is part of the problem we face as a society. But here, we have the opportunity to be part of the solution to that problem. 

That is why we will have looked to the best-in-class airports as a baseline for our sustainability plans, why public transport will play a huge role in the future connectivity of DSA, and why I am determined to build on South Yorkshire’s leading role in sustainable aviation by building an advanced manufacturing hub focused on extending and elevating that expertise, here at South Yorkshire Airport City. 
  
Some people have said we should be using all our funds to invest in public transport. I would remind people that we are already committed to spending around £2 billion before 2032 on public transport in South Yorkshire, as well as taking back control over our buses and our South Yorkshire Supertram network. 

Some people have said we are only supporting this project because there are so many people who back it across South Yorkshire, as though politicians shouldn’t try and find ways to do what their communities want them to do. 
 
Because devolution has given me not just the responsibility but the opportunity to invest in a brighter future for South Yorkshire not just for but with our communities, to take our future in our own hands. To look people in the eye, and listen to those most impacted by decisions before I take them. 

And I know some people have said we won’t be able to make DSA a success, when the private sector wasn’t able to. I would simply say that the private sector is not infallible. You only have to look at the litany of business failures, from Blockbuster to Debenhams, and potentially even a football club owner from Thailand just a little down the road, to know that private owners do not always make better long-term decisions about their own assets.    
  
Finally, I know some people have said we have taken too long to get to this point today, finding fault at every turn, and will no doubt continue to criticise our plans and approach. 

Some of that will be in good faith, while some of it will be motivated by the worst of politics; politicians and activists determined to talk down Doncaster and South Yorkshire for their own benefit, to suit their own narrative.

That approach has only ever done a disservice to this project and its chances of success; politicians who should have known better, carelessly arguing for us to throw huge amounts of public money around, without the due diligence taxpayers rightly deserve and expect, putting at risk money paid by hard working families, because they are not prepared to engage in the hard work of understanding what this project needs to succeed. 

Now we have committed this funding, I have no doubt that criticism will change from ‘he won’t spend the money’ to ‘he shouldn’t have spent the money’, or ‘he shouldn’t have spent the money in this way’. 

I hope our media is ready to hold them to account in exactly the same way I am always prepared to be held to account. Scrutinising their words just as they scrutinise mine. 

Because, thanks to the vast amount of work we’ve done before today, we know what we’re getting into, we know both the challenges and the opportunities in front of us.  

And as a result, I know that for this project to truly succeed we will need a patient and consistent approach to investment, to the development of the wider site, and not just to return aviation operations but grow the footprint of DSA from what it was before, to where we all want it to be. 

I always said that we would take the time we needed to get this decision, and this deal, right, but if and when we did agree the funding for this project, to reopen DSA and develop the wider South Yorkshire Airport City, as we have done today, I would commit wholeheartedly to making this the success it deserves to be. 

That is the only way to do this; to commit in full, for the long-term; a whole-team effort to not only restoring DSA to where it was in 2022, but to exploiting its fullest potential as a driver for jobs, growth and opportunity.  

That can never be a blank-cheque, of course. We will take a prudent, patient approach, but we will not be shy about our commitment to investing for the long-term. And this is a long-term investment in a complex project.  
  
And it will only succeed with the support of everyone in this room and everyone across South Yorkshire. It’s going to be our airport, support it, promote it, use it, help it become what you want it to be. I have no doubt you will.    

Because as I said when I spoke in Doncaster a couple of weeks ago, I have learned that the widespread support for this project was about more than simply aviation, or the promise of foreign travel. I have no doubt this project will take time, but over time it will be a success, in terms of jobs and growth and opportunity.

But is about more than any of those things, more than the sum of its parts. The huge groundswell of support we have seen for this decision across Doncaster and South Yorkshire is about pride, and dare I say it, it’s about hope. 

Let’s be honest, South Yorkshire hasn’t had the easiest breaks over the last few years. You could say there’s been some turbulence. 

But maybe this decision allows some people to actually, finally see and feel the excitement and hope in our future. Because there are brilliant people and things happening here. Our best days are not behind us. 

South Yorkshire is right at the heart of the country. We powered the first industrial revolution with steel and coal. Today, it was the brain power of the University of Sheffield that imagined into being the world’s first net-zero transatlantic flight. We are creating the materials that will make the planes of tomorrow lighter, quieter and quicker to build. We are a key supplier of steel for aircraft and defence. We make quantum computers that will be at the forefront of the next digital revolution and small modular nuclear technology that will underpin and power that revolution.  
    
When I was elected, I promised to restore the Pride, the Purpose and the Prosperity of South Yorkshire. Today, we take another huge step towards that better, brighter future, a future we are building together.