Seems the council is running into a few problems regarding its airport and its plans to jump the gun by starting building the £124 million approach road for the second terminal before the terminal is approved. The council thought they were clever keeping the road out of the DCO process, which will be decided by Government, as they claimed the road was for a business park. Most of this planned business park occupies the same public park that is required for airport expansion so can never be built.
Because it is not part of the DCO the council has discovered that despite the planning application coming from its own airport the road has got to be funded by the council and they can't afford it. They have already stated that the only way to fund the interest payments on the road is to cut council services but it gets worse. The dual carriageway is only viable if it serves a second terminal and not a business park but there is no guarantee the government will allow the airport to build a second terminal.
Now the councillors who have to vote this through and are normally compliant and somewhat intellectually challenged are surprisingly starting to ask questions which is resulting in that the decision for funding keeps getting deferred. I have no doubt that eventually this will be approved as the council has spent so much money on this project that it can't afford to quit now.
This leads to the next problem for the council which is a major one. The Government in a general funding consultation considers airports to be "high risk" properties so should be removed from local rating lists and placed on a central list. Should this happen it would have a very significant impact on Luton, as London Luton Airport is a major part of the Council’s current rating list. It would make Luton far more reliant on the business rates ‘top up’, and remove the potential link between future development of the Airport providing additional business rates income for the town.