Airfield plan should be shot down in flames

YET again on a planning issue, we have to ask despairingly: “Why do we bother to care?”

Old Sarum airfield, beset by would-be developers, was once memorably described by Winterslow’s councillor Chris Devine as “like a wagon train being encircled by Red Indians”.

He was right, and they’re brandishing their tomahawks again.

Back in 2010 when sites for new housing in South Wiltshire were being designated under the Core Strategy, a surprise, last-minute proposal for development at the southern end of the airfield was put forward by its owners, without public consultation.

Wiltshire Council officers had identified enough sites already, and they said so to the government inspector in charge of the process.

But he had other ideas, going so far as to suggest that the runway could be realigned to ease the way for builders.

The airfield is a conservation area. Three of its hangars are listed buildings. English Heritage calls it “the best preserved flying field of the First World War” – in other words, not a collection of unrelated buildings but a complete entity, and a national treasure.

Dismayed local councillors tried to get the scheme dropped at a City Hall meeting, but were told they couldn’t tinker with the Strategy without it becoming null and void.

They had to accept the whole package or risk a development free-for-all. Those were the rules.

Still, so strong was the opposition, led by councillor Ian McLennan, that Wiltshire boss Jane Scott stepped in.

To sighs of relief all round, she suggested getting the runway listed to protect it, saying there was “more than one way to skin a cat”.

No sooner was the meeting over than her idea was shot down by planners, who told her land can’t be listed. But by then the rest of us had gone away with the impression that something was being done.

Now residents have been invited to a ‘public consultation’ by the airfield’s operators, who claim they need the profits from new homes on its perimeter to manage the conservation area and put up a visitor centre, which Wiltshire policy currently requires.

For how long do you imagine the buyers of these homes will put up with the noise of flying, literally on their doorstep?

And if flying is restricted as a result, how long before our historic airfield is closed down as uneconomic?