We thought we would briefly report a rather extraordinary event at one of the early examination sessions of the Flintshire LDP today. Matters of Strategic growth and 2 Key Strategic Sites (the Northern Gateway and Warren Hall) were under discussion.

These are time limited sessions, so after nearly 2.5 hours on the Northern Gateway site - and having already decided she was going to need to give some more time to these matters in a further session next week -the examining Inspector though it fair to give a number of very patient “non-planning professionals” the opportunity to speak about Warren Hall in case they didn’t want to sit in next weeks session.

And the starter for 10 was Airbus. Warren Hall Key site sits under the flightpath/landing/take off/approach to Hawarden Aerodrome. Their witness referenced a new hearing statement issued at 0927 this morning. It seems further assessment has resulted in potentially rather serious concerns over the impact to their runway of the proposals to develop Warren Hall. These matters appears to revolve around mapping of Obstacle Limitation Surfaces and Inner Horizontal Levels and we presumed from the very brief discussion - how much development (if any?) could be accommodated on the site and if so its height above mean sea level.

Wow. The morning of the Examination second day. Just wow.

Flabbers were gasted to say the very least. That left the Inspector with no choice but to park the rest of the session on the spot and to ask Airbus, Welsh Government and Flintshire to find a little corner of a zoom room for a chat. It really would be very odd indeed for a Strategic Site to advance quite so far only for a potential show stopper to emerge at this stage.

A further session is tentatively re-scheduled for next Thursday, assuming the three parties can clarify what the issue is in that time.