This winter Teesside International Airport Ltd have been dumping soil on the rare National Priority Habitat Lowland Meadow plant community that lies within their site boundary.
They applied for permission, via their Agent, to Stockton Council https://www.developmentmanagement.stockton.gov.uk/online-applications/caseDetails.do?caseType=Application&keyVal=S2U0AKPKL8P00 who agreed that the destruction could occur without any need for mitigation. Not surprisingly the rare grassland habitat wasn’t mentioned in the application.
So how do we know the habitat is there?
Well, in 2015 the then owners of the Airport applied to put a road through the grassland and so there was an ecology survey https://www.developmentmanagement.stockton.gov.uk/online-applications/applicationDetails.do?activeTab=documents&keyVal=NQUKQ4PKGFL00 “Most of the grassland can be attributed to the NVC MG5 Centaureo-Cynosuretum cristatii grassland.” section 4.2.1.1. The planning application was resubmitted on Fri 31 Aug 2018 https://www.developmentmanagement.stockton.gov.uk/online-applications/applicationDetails.do?activeTab=documents&keyVal=PEBMMAPKI5L00 and the updated ecological survey stated “The main ecological constraint to the proposed Link Road is the loss of 2.03 ha of unimproved grassland of at least county ecology and nature conservation value.”
Tees Valley Nature Partnership took action, and failed …
At the beginning of 2018 the Tees Valley Nature Partnership, having seen the ecology survey from the 2015 report and previous Phase 1 mapping of the site, wrote to Stockton Council recommending the whole 100 hectares of grassland within the airport boundary be designated a Local Wildlife Site (LWS) https://teesvalleynaturepartnership.org.uk/events-and-meetings/tvnp-steering-group-meetings/tvnp-letter-to-ston-re-airport-lws/ . In May 2018 both Stockton Council and Darlington Council (the boundary between the two councils runs through the airport) refused, as, “If ratified, the LWS is added to the list of LWSs within the borough, which means the designation can be included in the Local Plan / policies map and receives consideration under the appropriate Local Plan policies. The public and developers, can also see that it has wildlife value and that it will be a planning constraint.” (para 5.3 page 11, ‘Duty to Cooperate Teesside Airport’ https://www.stockton.gov.uk/article/1879/Duty-to-cooperate ). They concluded it would be looked after by the Airport Operator so there was no need to designate it. At the time the Airport was a private company and this was the first time an LWS designation put forward by the Tees Valley Nature Partnership had been refused by the respective Councils. I think we can all see it sets a bad precedent.
Just to remind ourselves how important this type of grassland is …
For context, Natural England estimate that for this type of grassland habitat (MG5) there is less than 6,000 hectares in the whole of England and “only 9% of sites are over 10 hectares” in size (https://publications.naturalengland.org.uk/publication/6626052 ). When I asked Natural England if they’d looked at the site, they replied (17 August 2017) they had no plans to do so. Later correspondence was more productive but ended with (4 June 2019) there not being an investigative budget, but they would be grateful for any further information I could supply.
And now some of the emails I sent because I didn’t trust the Airport, its owners or its owners’ owners.
On 16/07/2019 I emailed Tees Valley Combined Authority* (TVCA) to ask “if you have undertaken a Phase 2 vegetation survey of the grounds of the Airport? If you have, could I please have a copy? If you have not can you let me know when it is time-tabled to occur?” – no answer. I wrote again as a Freedom of Information request on 07/01/2020 and they informed me that “Tees Valley Combined Authority does not hold the requested information”, adding “…Teesside International Airport is a separate, non-public legal entity to the Authority, and it is therefore not obliged to undertake a Phase 2 vegetation survey in respect of its site.” and “Despite not being subject to such an obligation, I can assure you that Teesside International Airport continues to take active steps in ensuring biodiversity is protected. It is currently working with its Southside developer to review all relevant aspects of its site in accordance with good development practice, and in accordance with the normal planning application process.”
Because Goosepool 2019 Ltd* currently own the largest share in the Airport https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/02020423/persons-with-significant-control and they are a private company (couldn’t find an email contact for them; I wrote a letter, but they didn’t answer) I was unable to follow what was going on at the Airport and so I asked “Does the Tees Valley Combined Authority or anyone who works at the Tees Valley Combined Authority have any direct contact with the Airport regarding how the Airport and its site is managed or how it works with a developer in the future development planning and delivery process? If yes can you direct me to any records of those meetings please?” only to find out that this is available publicly https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/02020423/officers but they said “For clarification however, two officers of the Combined Authority currently sit on the Board of TIAL, and various officers of the Combined Authority attend meetings with airport management from time to time. There are no records of those meetings publicly available for us to direct you to.” Ref: 10/2020 (Follow-Up Question) which means I can’t find out how public money is spent at the Airport, and neither can you.
On 05/02/2020 I emailed the Airport “I understand that there is 100 ha of semi-natural grassland within your grounds and that as you are a publicly-owned company you have carried out a botanical survey of the grounds and these are therefore publicly available. Can you please supply me with a copy of any information that you have on the botanical composition of the plant communities within the airport grounds?” – no answer. I followed that email up on 26/06/2020 – no answer. I wrote “publicly-owned” because technically they are and the Tees Valley Mayor uses that phrase.
I tried again with TVCA (Ref: TVCA 37/2021) on 1st March, 2021 with “What evidence can you provide to show that the board has used the appropriate due-diligence to ensure that none of the Tees Valley’s heritage grassland vegetation has been or will be damaged using public money when the Southside Business Park is built or that if you are aware heritage grassland is to be damaged then it will be properly recorded and the information deposited with the local record centre?” and their response was … “Teesside International Airport is an independent company has its own board and governance arrangements. The airport is not subject to the Freedom of Information act or the Environmental Information Regulations we are therefore unable to provide this information.”. I suspect the soil used to damage the rare plant community has come from the building of the Southside Business Park, but as you will have guessed by now there is no way I can find out.
In December 2021 I wrote to Defra to ask if the “the government have any plans to make it illegal to destroy National Priority Habitat Lowland Meadow?” and in their reply (TO2021/29793, Aug 2022) they said there were enough legal protections for Priority Habitats and so they did not have any plans to make a blanket ban. Ironically, one of the protections they listed was the Local Wildlife Site designation.
I informed my MP of the issues on 7/3/2019 but sadly no answer. (In fact I rather naively emailed all the Tees Valley MP’s thinking that they would work together for the good of the area, but apparently it doesn’t work like that).
I tried again with my MP on 11/01/2022 in which I asked “As my MP would it be possible for you to email Teesside International Airport on my behalf to ask them if they have conducted a Phase two survey of the grassland within the boundaries of the Airport as a baseline set of data so they are able to monitor the effect of its management in the future and also ask if that survey is available publicly?” and included a document with all the evidence backing up the importance of the grassland, but didn’t get a reply.
So where does that get us?
Sending emails to people means you can say that you tried to alert them, but in this case it doesn’t change the outcome: a publicly owned company destroying a National Priority Habitat with public money (TVCA, a public body, support the Airport with public money – see notes at the end).
Can we end on a positive note?
No. I’ve emailed both Darlington Council and Stockton Council and asked them to designate the rest of the site a Local Wildlife Site; Darlington replied and are (genuinely) looking into it, Stockton did not reply. Not my place to tell local authorities what to do to be honest but I was so annoyed I thought I’d try; I’ve asked for the subject to be put on the agenda for the next Tees Valley Nature Partnership meeting in the hope that they can send a strongly worded letter to both Councils, but I’ve not heard back yet. I haven’t bothered emailing Teesside International Airport as, clearly, they know exactly what they’ve done with the public money they have been given.
Notes
* contacting Tees Valley Combined Authority because they are a public body and so must respond to Freedom of Information Requests and technically they actually own the Airport. A chart detailing the ownership can be found after the list of Board members here https://www.teessideinternational.com/about-us/teesside-international-airport-ltd/
The Intermingled Pot 
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