Bosses at Manston Airport hope to confirm funding for its redevelopment will be in place before the end of the year - another step forward in one of Kent’s longest-running sagas.

It is six months since the Thanet airfield finally cleared its final hurdle in a long-running legal dispute - half a year in which, to the naked eye, the site remains untouched. Weeds continue to grow, gates remained locked, buildings unused.

In fact, the only sign of life has been a recently staged weekly Saturday market which has, for the first time since the site was used to house HGVs en route to the continent, seen activity on the site.

However, next summer, the Manston International Airshow will return - earmarked for August 16 and 17 - promising to see actual planes use the airport’s runway once again; the first time since it closed in 2014..

Yet all are just an aperitif to the main dish - the multi-million-pound regeneration and relaunch of the airport as a cargo hub and key part of east Kent’s economic jigsaw.

But things are finally moving - albeit, so far at least, only administratively. For those many vocal supporters of the airport, we remain the best part of four years away from its full rebirth.

For years it had been held up by Ramsgate resident Jenny Dawes. She had crowd-funded a legal challenge to the decision by the government to grant a development consent order (DCO) for the airport to reopen.

But her bid to halt the plans came to an end in May.

RiverOak Strategic Partners (RSP), which owns the airport and is spearheading its plans, then had to wait a further month to confirm there would be no legal recourse to the Supreme Court. There wasn’t and the airport was finally cleared for take-off.

However, despite the months which have now passed, it will still be “at least” a further 18 months before a spade enters the ground and the overhaul of the site finally gets underway.

But work is going on behind the scenes with a full fresh costing of the project now complete.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given inflation, the initial costs have increased, as Tony Freudmann, director at Manston Airport, explains: “We started with a review of the capital spend - in other words, how much is it going to cost to bring Manston to the point where it's fully developed as envisaged by the DCO.

“It's no secret those costs have escalated since we last looked at it five years ago for the public inquiry. It’s risen from around £400 million to around £650 million. Those are figures as of October 2024.

“If you're putting together a funding package, you need to know how much money you need to raise. We haven't been able to do that while the litigation has been going on.

“But when you think of the amount of work that's going to be done it is significant. This is a construction project that's probably going to involve a workforce of about 650 on-site for a period of two years.”

Many of those, he says, they’ll want to recruit locally, while provision will also be required for some to stay on site.

He adds: “It is a very big capital programme. It requires the assembly of the consultant team to design the work, oversee it, make sure we comply with all the requirements in the DCO.”

Every existing building is set for demolition and the site will be completely transformed.

In truth, the legal challenges - launched after it was first granted a DCO in 2020 - didn’t just bolt on four years to the scheme’s hoped-for big relaunch.

Only once it was clear it could proceed, earlier this year, could work fully begin on activating the investment in the scheme. Consultants required for all aspects of the work had to be reappointed and time found in their schedules to once again focus on the site’s cargo ambitions.

Adds Tony Freudmann: “We have begun the process of reassembling a professional team - which is fancy jargon for saying all the consultancies we need on everything from airspace to the environment to transport links; these are major consultants. They have been on hold for four years and we are now in the process of re-hiring them all and agreeing new terms and work profiles. Even that is a complex process; specifiying the work programme, what exactly needs to happen, in what order and at what pace. That work has begun.

“There will have to be - to pick up one example - a new ecological survey. We did one on essential ecology all those years ago - nesting birds, rare plant life, that sort of thing - that's all going to have to be done again.

“Then, more broadly, there's the masterplan itself.

“That was created in 2018, six years ago. Things have moved on since then. Investors expect to be investing in an airport which meets the highest environmental standards and is future-proofed in terms of where the environment is concerned and that work has got to be done. That's just starting now.

“We have probably 18 months of that work ahead of us before any construction work can begin. Not to mention redesigning the buildings planned.

“Six years ago there was only fleeting reference to buildings meeting environmental standards. We have to change all that - solar panels on the roof of buildings, wind turbines around the airport - all of that stuff. Work has got to be done to design it, to cost it and include it in a construction contract with a principal contractor. That's a lot of work.”

And once that is done - and the money to actually fund it is secured (Freudmann hopes that announcement will be made “this side of Christmas” but warns it could topple into 2025) - then it will be down to the logistics of getting everyone in place to actually build the thing.

“It could be longer than 18 months,” he adds, “because it depends on what you find when you do surveys. There's archaeological work which needs to be done - we don't think there's much there but there could be.

“But if all goes to plan then we’re looking at work starting in the first quarter of 2026. We're currently saying that will last two years, but being realistic, the second or third quarter of 2028 is when we hope the airport opens.”

RSP is determined to do that “on time and on budget”.

Its team is set to expand too.

“It's not going to be just me,” he explains. “I will probably be overseeing the project in some way, but there will be a professional team.

“And of course, running alongside that, is the sales and marketing team who will also be brought on board because the dialogue we've had with the various freight forwarders and airlines needs to be taken forward - putting deals together, getting commitments, getting signed agreements.”

There’s also the issue of nearby roads - in particular the current crossroads which splits Spitfire Way and Manston Road, near the two museums. Discussion continues over whether to create a roundabout there or introduce traffic lights. It is a barely visible tip of a giant infrastructure iceberg.

However, don’t be at all surprised to see that £650 million price tag increase. Inevitably, prices today will be swollen when money is spent in two years’ time. In previous interviews, Tony Freudmann had suggested the total investment may need to be closer to £800 million. Only time will tell.

While there has been much excited chatter about the return of commercial passenger flights to Manston, the reality is that remains a distant possibility, rather than a planned-for certainty.

The success, or otherwise, of the revived Manston Airport will be carried on the wings of cargo flights. Only if it proves a success will passenger flights be considered. In short, we could be at least a decade away before planning our holidays with a flight from Thanet.

Worth noting is that in a presentation to Kent County Council’s growth, economic development and communities cabinet earlier this month there was no mention of passenger flights. It will need to prove it can walk before it can run.

But RSP is adamant the airport - this time at least - has a genuinely bankable proposal.

As Tony Freudmann explains: “Not many people understand air freight - it is the Cinderella side of the aviation business. But in countries which have large national airports with lots of runways, you usually find one dedicated runway for cargo.

“In the UK, only Heathrow and Manchester have more than one runway and they’re trying to combine cargo with passengers - and passengers always get priority for obvious reasons.

“The result of that is this chronic shortage of capacity. Up to two million tonnes of UK air freight in and outbound comes through northern European airports, not through British airports.

“It is wasteful, expensive and an environmental disaster. If that can come into Manston it will make good business for us, it will be good for the country and the people who are using those airports in northern Europe who don't want to use them but have to as they've got nowhere to go.

“It's not as though we are speculatively building an airport and saying 'we'll pinch somebody else's business'. The only business we'll relocate is business which is reluctantly going into northern European airports and having to cross the Channel by lorry because they can't get into an airport in the UK.

“To people who say, 'Well, it never worked before', the answer is it never had any investment before.

“A lot of people have visited the airport and you can see for yourself, almost nothing was ever spent on it.

“This is an over-simplification, but the airport before it was closed was quite successful in bringing in imports of perishables from east Africa - green beans, fruit that kind. But the problem for the airport and the business was that aircaraft left Manston empty as it didn't have any warehousing facilities for backloads - it had no office space for freight forwarders to set up an operational business at Manston because trade by definition is in and out.”

Investors have been faced with two choices. Either build a cargo hub small enough to start getting planes coming and going again and then look to expand - or build big from the get-go.

Explains Tony Freudmann: “The problem then, if you have to start a second phase, you're doing so building around an operational airport - which isn't easy and is very expensive.

“So I think the view we will come to - and investors will come to - is that they go for more or less the whole thing. And get it built.”

The result, when all is up and running, will be around 25,000 freight arrivals and departures a year. Heathrow, for comparison, is in excess of ten times that figure when passenger flights are included. Not that it will come as much comfort to those living under Manston’s flight path - namely those in Ramsgate - many of whom have long opposed its reopening for precisely that reason.

If the sums all add up, then five years after opening - RSP says - it will be employing more than 2,000 people at the site. An essential employment shot in the arm for an area short on significant industry.

Oh, and it will be known as Manston Airport once up and running. There will be no revival of its previous Kent International or London Manston titles (nor, as Freudmann comments, a bid to have it renamed Canterbury International - a decision which would not sit well with the Thanet population).

As to who will actually run the airport - that remains to be seen.

Tony Freudmann concludes: “The answer to that isn't clear at the moment. RSP will certainly remain in place but its ownership may change, either partly or wholly.

“The operation of the airport itself will be in the hands of a major recognised international airport operator. There are very large companies out there that run airports.

“But our role, as we see it at the moment, is to oversee the delivery of this airport, fully developed, bringing it in on time and to budget. Which is the biggest single challenge really.”