Re-use of small airfields: a planning perspective

The English countryside has, in recent years, been subject to an array of development pressures, many of which have been the focus of both national and local debate. Local planning authorities (LPAs) have been handed the task of negotiating these pressures and navigating a difficult path between the need to permit necessary development and the desire to sustain environmental quality and local amenity. It is within this context that less contentious development sites have been sought which also offer sustainable solutions. Wartime airfields have, in many instances, been seen as suitable sites for redevelopment and it is patterns of land re-use on such sites that provide the focus of this research monograph. h a national survey of local planning practice on wartime airfields, and a series of local case studies, the research which is reported within this monograph explores both the ways in which re-use has been regulated by the UK planning system and the nature of re-use on different sites. Maintaining the rights of aviation groups is an added pressure upon this process. More specifically, the monograph focuses attention on current uses on these sites, the regulatory role of the planning system and the compatibility of new and established uses.