Sat Nov 28, 2015 10:21 pm
#1421221
The owner of a piece of land is free to run it as an airfield if they want to, even it it's a housing site in the local plan - in theory there's a risk of CPO but in practice that pretty well never happens (and indeed if the owner says "I have no intention of stopping running this as an airfield within the local plan period" then it's unlikely to be designated for housing in the first place, as these designations are supposed to have evidence of deliverability).
Unless, of course, the owner is a company answerable to shareholders, in which case, should the shareholders wish to enforce this (which they might not in some cases, eg a family company) the directors have a duty to maximise shareholder value, and they might fail to convince shareholders that running an airfield for a profit of 47p (in a good year) gets better value from the land than selling it for housing for £1bn and sticking the proceeds in the bank, even at today's interest rates.