The ongoing High Court legal battle over the future of Manston Airport has cost those behind the plans to revive it at least £200,000, it has been revealed.

In addition to the soaring legal bills – and bitter division on the Isle – plans for the Thanet airfield to reopen as a cargo hub have now been delayed by four years.

But the team behind the project say despite feeling moments of “exasperation and annoyance” at the legal challenges put in their way, they remain confident it could be cleared for take-off, finally, in just a matter of weeks.

They have also reiterated that investors remain ready, despite the lengthy delays, to plough in the hundreds of millions of pounds needed to get the site up and running.

If it clears what must surely be its final legal hurdle, work on the site could finally begin next year – the 10th anniversary of when the site saw the shutters pulled down and cease operation.

“You have to just stay confident in the strength of the case," reflects Tony Freudmann, director of RiverOak Strategic Partners (RSP), who has become the public face of the airport’s hoped-for revival.

“And the case is overwhelmingly strong.”

But it is far from that to Jenny Dawes. She is the Ramsgate resident who has led crowdfunding campaigns to battle the plans.

In a saga which has divided the people of Thanet over the years, she has spearheaded the opposition campaign.

She insists “the re-opening of Manston Airport would result in irreparable harm to the people, the economy, the natural environment and the heritage of the towns and villages of east Kent”.

RSP says it will bring jobs and economic vitality to the whole of east Kent.

The battle lines are well established.

To briefly recap the current legal battle, the airport’s plans were considered a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIP). As the name suggests, this applies to big infrastructure projects such as major road schemes, power plants or airports.

In these relatively few cases, rather than planning permission being handled by the relevant local council, it is instead ruled upon by Whitehall.

To allow it to proceed it requires a Development Consent Order (DCO).

For Manston, this was originally granted in 2020. Enter Jenny Dawes.

She was successful in winning a judicial review into the DCO. In other words, asking for a High Court judge to review the decision taken by a government body – in this case, the Department of Transport.

In January 2021, she was successful and the DCO was quashed.

Going back to the drawing board, a new DCO application was submitted and, again, granted. Ms Dawes challenged it again and an application for a second judicial review to be held was granted.

However, following a hearing in July, last month it was confirmed the judicial review bid was being rejected.

Now Ms Dawes has just two weeks remaining in which to raise the funds necessary to challenge that decision (not the DCO itself) in the Court of Appeal. She has stated she intends to do just that.

If she doesn’t apply then the legal challenge, finally, grinds to a halt. If she does, the uncertainty will continue for several more weeks.

While remaining tight-lipped on its hopes, the mood within RSP is optimistic.

Jenny Dawes, notoriously media-shy, is doing the same. She has, throughout her three-year campaign, refused to give any media interviews (including a request from KentOnline for this article).

On her crowdfunding platform, she wrote of the “disappointing decision” last month, adding last week: “Despite apparent setbacks, I remain firmly of the view that the government's decision to proceed with Manston Airport, in the face of expert evidence to the contrary and in the context of the worsening climate crisis, is nonsensical, and the procedure followed by the Secretary of State was deeply flawed.”

Friends of Ms Dawes have also expressed increasing concern about the level of vitriol aimed at her online in any debate over the future of Manston. As the name linked to trying to stop the plans, she has become a target. Little wonder, perhaps, she keeps such a low profile.

That concern about the personal attacks is a view shared by RSP’s Tony Freudmann. He said: “It’s just unpleasant. I get some as well. I mean, these are just keyboard warriors. This is the world we live in, unfortunately, isn't it? And if you stick your head above the parapet you have to expect it these days.”

He agreed with the suggestion that those on both sides of the debate adopt caution about the sometimes incendiary language used.

Another impact is that all the time money is being spent in the legal system, there remains no movement on the site itself.

Mr Freudmann says: “Uncertainty is the worst thing you can have with a big infrastructure project. There are, and we’ve said this repeatedly, investors willing to fund this airport project because it's so obviously wanted.

“But while there is uncertainty hanging over it, of course they hold off. They want to do this and are just waiting on us to let them know when the last bit of uncertainty is gone and they’ll be there with us.”

Those investors have always been kept a tightly guarded secret.

There are, and we’ve said this repeatedly, investors willing to fund this airport project because it's so obviously wanted.

If the legal wrangle is resolved imminently, the design and detailed survey work will begin in the new year and take the whole of 2024.

Construction work would then begin in 2025 and take around two years.

Mr Freudmann adds: “So that probably means we’ll open in 2027, which is four years later than we’d hoped.

“Roughly, our costs are now in the region of £200,000 just for the High Court litigation. I assume the government’s are of the same order.”

The airport’s current investors are picking up that legal tab.

The delays also mean that any passenger flights – a crowd-pleasing carrot dangled by RSP should the cargo hub prove successful where other commercial endeavours at the airport have failed – are, at best guess, at least a decade away.

All of which begs the question as to why this saga has been allowed to drag on?

On one hand, as Jenny Dawes fights for, there is a clear environmental issue in this era of pressing climate change. On the other, a project which is promising jobs and industry for an area long denied it.

Tony Freudmann says the government’s planning process has a lot to answer for.

He explains: “The 2008 Planning Act took decisions on nationally significant infrastructure projects out of the hands of local authorities and put them in the hands of central government.

“That was designed to avoid the delays that had taken place 10 years earlier in relation to Terminal 5 at Heathrow. There you had a number of local authorities battling it out with the owners of Heathrow and it went on for years and years and it was a disaster.

“So the 2008 Planning Act assumed the government, for nationally significant infrastructure projects, would produce a national policy statement. A policy statement in planning terms means a detailed statement of what they want to happen. So that would apply not just to us but renewables, roads, railways, everything.

“Well, in the case of aviation, they haven't done it. There isn't a national policy statement for aviation. There was one produced in 2018, which related primarily to Heathrow, and there's been nothing since. So nobody in the aviation business knows where they stand.

“So if you come up with a proposal and you want to go to the private market to fund it and the government doesn't want to put public money in, the first thing that the private sector ask is, ‘OK, where's the national policy statement? Where can we read that the government supports this?’, and they can't. There isn't one.

“If there was.a national policy statement which said, in our case, a new runway in the South East of England is needed for dedicated air freight because the UK isn't performing in that field, that would have made a huge difference.

“It would have speeded the process up and is what investors want to hear. There's loads of private sector investment out there. But they want certainty.”

And certainty is the one thing the Manston Airport site has not had for nigh-on 10 years. One way or the other, its future should be confirmed within weeks.