ONE of the people I met on my recent visit to the Houses of Parliament – other than an irate Conservative MP – was Vincent Hodder, the chief executive of Leeds Bradford Airport.
Hodder is a burly, shaven-headed Australian with a no-nonsense straight-talking approach to business.
With plenty of experience in the airline industry around the world, you sense he arrived at the Yorkshire airport just over a year ago with a brief, and a determination, to get its ambitious expansion plans sorted.
The £150m project involved the building of a new terminal building which LBA said would make it one of the most efficient and sustainable airport terminals, helping it to achieve its carbon net-zero goals by 2023 with passenger numbers rising from the current four million to seven million a year..
The pandemic aside, these plans have been dogged by protests from climate change campaigners and delayed by mealy-mouthed politicians finding various ways to avoid making a decision about them.
Having made lots of noise about a “climate emergency” and shown a willingness to engage with some of the oddest and more extreme members of the climate change lobby, it was feared Leeds City Council might bottle the decision on planning approval for the new development at the airport.
But the council’s planning committee approved the project at a meeting last February and it seemed it was all systems go.
I always thought the biggest hurdle that LBA would face was getting the green light for its plans from the local council.
With the national government having pledged to invest in “levelling up” and “building back better” here was a project that would tick those boxes and involve private investment rather than public money.
But Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick postponed making a decision on calls for a public inquiry and then his successor Michael Gove “called in” the plans meaning a public enquiry would have to be held, delaying any decision for the foreseeable future.
Given that the Government has recently canned plans for the HS2 rail project to go to Leeds and watered down the Northern Powerhouse Rail project to speed up cross-Pennine services, here was another decision that gave critics the opportunity to say it was a further “slap in the face” for the North.
When CEO Vincent Hodder questioned the MPs on the panel at the recent CBI and Barclays Yorkshire reception at Westminster, you could hear the frustration in his voice.
I went up to speak to him after the event and he said his frustration was with the Government for delaying a decision on a project that would see significant investment in Yorkshire, improve transport links and encourage more people to fly from their local airport rather than travel to Manchester or London.
He wondered why the Government couldn’t trust the decision made by local politicians to approve the plans.
And then he said that, having invested several million pounds in the project already, the airport’s owner, global investment manager AMP Capital, would be pulling their more ambitious plans and reverting to a smaller investment in the existing airport terminal building.
Two days later that decision was confirmed.
It was greeted with glee by GALBA – the Group for Action on Leeds Bradford Airport.
Hodder had joked to me at the event in London that he expected he was the only person in Yorkshire with their own protest group.
To be fair to GALBA they have been effective in mobilising support, even if some of their protests have been a bit ‘way out’ – like throwing themselves to the floor in a council planning meeting to illustrate the effect of climate change on humans.
Having succeeded with their campaign they are now calling on the airport’s Australian owners, AMP Capital to invest £125m in West Yorkshire home insulation businesses to cut fuel bills and reduce emissions.
GALBA settled on that figure because it is the £150m that the new terminal project would have cost minus the £25m it is estimated that work to the existing terminal will now cost.
GALBA helpfully illustrated their press release announcing this news with a photo of chair Chris Foren sending its report entitled ‘A Green New Deal for Leeds City Region’ to AMP.
Standing next to his local post box, he held a brown envelope with a Post-it note taped to the front with the words scrawled on it in felt tip: ‘AMP Capital, Sydney, Australia’.
I know these protesters are concerned about climate change on Earth, but I do sometimes wonder what planet they are actually on.
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DURING my brief trip to London I was wandering along Oxford Street before getting a train back North.
I spotted a familiar figure on the pavement outside a branch of menswear retailer Moss Bros taking photographs of the shop window.
“Is this what can be described as industrial espionage?” I said conspiratorially to Simon Berwin, former boss of historic Leeds family tailoring business Berwin & Berwin.
He greeted me warmly and said no, he was just doing a bit of research as he was having dinner with the chief executive of Moss Bros that evening.
“And I was very impressed with that display in the shop window, what do you think of it?” he asked.
I thought it was a triumph of texture and colour which ably illustrated the layering opportunities in menswear that the new spring and summer seasons afford.
But instead I think I just said: “It’s nice.”
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BACK in Leeds, I was invited to the opening party of Buttress Architects who have launched a new office in the city.
The Manchester-based firm has a reputation for working on designs for historic and unusual buildings and its new Leeds team can already showcase the impressive work the firm has done on the Grade II* listed First White Cloth Hall.
The building is located behind the Corn Exchange on Kirkgate, Leeds’ oldest street.
The First White Cloth Hall was built in 1711 for the sale of undyed cloth – making it perhaps the first commercial building in Leeds.
But it has been derelict and hidden for years, surrounded by amusement arcades and kebab shops and has been on Historic England’s Heritage at Risk Register since 1999.
However an ambitious project by Leeds-based developer Rushbond has seen the building transformed.
Rushbond was behind the impressive renaissance of the Majestic in City Square, now home to Channel 4.
Now called simply Cloth Hall, the building now offers a unique opportunity for a variety of uses including as contemporary work space, a concept retail store, cultural business or leisure or restaurant business.
As part of Buttress’ Leeds launch, guests enjoyed drinks and food at The Lost & Found bar and restaurant on Albion Place – the old Leeds Club – and were taken on tours of the White Cloth Hall.
It is an impressive space that will prove an inspiring home to whatever venture that decides to move in.
After the tour, back at The Lost & Found, guests heard from Gavin Sorby, the managing director of Buttress Architects who said the new Leeds office was a response to growing work in Yorkshire for the firm.
He said he was particularly pleased because he grew up in Leeds.
The new office will be headed up by James Lewis, who has returned to his home city from London to take up the role.
James is the son of former Town Centre Securities director Richard Lewis.
That’s not a bad pedigree, given how popular and respected his father is.
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I’VE been away in Marrakesh for the last week.
A bit of R&R did the power of good, even if I had to get an early flight with Ryanair out of Manchester Airport to get there.
People often compare Leeds Bradford Airport with its counterpart over the Pennines.
It strikes me there isn’t that much difference between the two other than the length of time it takes to get to Manchester and the fact that it is a bigger airport with a wider selection of flights.
When I’m flying out of Leeds Bradford I often play a game where I try and spot someone I think I wouldn’t mind sitting next to on my flight.
I saw a pensioner in a Panama hat and cotton blazer once who seemed like he might be OK, but that’s about it.
In Manchester it’s pretty much similar except that the larger passenger numbers mean there is a wider selection of scrotes to assess.
And there’s no point moaning about Ryanair, we all know their approach.
Although when I got in the car to take us from our hotel back to Marrakesh Airport I opened the Ryanair app on my phone to view the boarding passes having checked in using it a few days before.
With no issues flagged up when I had originally checked in, suddenly the Ryanair app was telling me that I couldn’t access boarding passes on the app and needed to access them online and print them out.
Or face coughing up a large fee at the Ryanair desk at the airport, I guessed.
So there I am in the back of a car on the way to the airport with no possibility of printing out boarding passes.
I gazed out of the car window towards the snow-capped Atlas Mountains to the south.
Grimacing and gurning with frustration, I imagine I did a passable impression of Bob Hoskins in the final scene of The Long Good Friday.
Have a great weekend.