Plymouth airport housing plans take off

Sutton Harbour Group has made a pre-submission planning application to transform the former Plymouth airport into a housing scheme. The masterplan for the 113-acre site will set out three phases of development. Phase 1 has already seen the delivery of 345 new homes and a new link road bordering the airport site. Phase 2, which will be delivered over the next three to five years, will continue to preserve the main runway at the former airport site, and will propose development for institutional, business and housing development on other areas of the site. Sutton Harbour said this approach would allow a further five years for a potential financially viable general aviation proposition to materialise. Phase 3 of the masterplan sets out alternative uses of the remainder of the site in the absence of a financially viable general aviation operation. This includes a mix of uses including a range of social and market housing types. The land, disused as an airport since 2011, was protected from development for five years by the government’s planning inspector in 2018. That protection expires shortly.