Latest from Leeds Bradford Airport

Leeds Bradford airport has submitted a new CLEUD application (Certificate of Lawful Existing Use or Development) to Leeds City Council. This relates to the operation of night movements (flights) at the airport following discussions.

The airport had previously said it would submit a section 73 planning application which could look at many aspects of the airports operation. See our article about this at the time.

However, based on the decision taken by the Planning Inspectorate in July 2025, following the public enquiry, the airport have decided instead to submit another CLEUD, which will specifically look at night movements. The airport is currently allowed to operate a called number of night flights.

This is very frustrating. They are avoiding a full democratic process - a CLEUD is not open to public consultation as other Planning applications are.

However, once the CLEUD application is published in full on the council's planning portal, groups and individuals can submit legal or factual submissions as they did last time they submitted these CLEUDs.

We’ll keep you updated on what's happening, when this will be published in full, and we'll re-publish here what we said last time we heard they were planning to put an application in:

"To reiterate our role; while councillors cannot control the planning process - planning is meant to be independent of politics and driven by legal considerations - we are prioritising:

• Public involvement: we don't want changes that substantially affect residents to be made without real consultation

• Public understanding: this stuff is complicated and we have experts on both sides of the argument making their case, we want to share what we can in an understandable format

• Action on enforcement: the problem with these repeated applications from the airport is that they muddy the water and make it trickier for the council to take enforcement action because there are 'open questions' to be answered. We're always lobbying for the maximum enforcement to be taken while being prudent with spending taxpayer's money. The airport have certainly been breaking their planning conditions and they shouldn't be allowed to get away with it, because those conditions exist for good reason!"