Chief Minister Alf Cannan has said he was in the dark over the plans to zone land around Jurby Airfield.
At a meeting on Monday night, airport director Gary Cobb said there is no plans to build a new airport at Jurby, but it is “prudent” to protect land around it incase of a future need.
Speaking at the meeting, Mr Cannan, who is also the MHK for Ayre and Michael, said himself and Tim Johnston, the constituency’s other MHK, were “deeply concerned about what we have seen”.
He said: “I can tell you we met last week with the chief executive, with the airport’s director and various other senior officers and after that meeting it was agreed by the senior officers that this proposal would be lifted from the area plan and would be dealt with under the airport master plan.
“I want to reassure you that we as constituency MHKs are taking this matter extremely seriously.”
Independent Process
Mr Cannan told the meeting that the draft area plan process is “independent” so the MHKs look at areas of primary concern, but are not deeply involved.
He said: “In terms of this map, we got presented with this map a few weeks before, so Council of Ministers actually saw it, in a ministerial capacity, an information document came through council, it wasn’t a matter for voting, it was an information document and this restrains map was contained within that.
“So like everybody else, at the same time as you saw it, I was also reading through the documentation to understand what was in there and what impacts it would have on the local area.”
However, Mr Cannan said that on his initial reading, he didn’t have any concerns about the map or any plans for Jurby, it was only on later reading he saw the problems.
He said: “In terms of the way it has been presented, I think we can all agree, particularly from an MHK perspective, it has not been handled well it would have been great if we had been told well in advance that there were definitive plans for a runway but we saw this at the same time as it was coming through the planning inquiry process.”
Mr Cannan then clarified he did not mean that there is a definitive plan for a runway and that he was referring to the strategic zoning plans.
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