A GOVERNMENT grant will cover the annual cost of Teesside Airport’s business rates, Tees Valley Mayor Ben Houchen has said.

The airport is already subsidised courtesy of a £39m deal which was signed off in February last year by the Tees Valley Combined Authority to bring it back into public hands.

The Government has committed tens of millions of pounds in support funding to airports to mitigate the impact of the coronavirus.

Mr Houchen said Teesside would receive £471,000 from the investment – equivalent to the business rates being paid in 2020/21.

The mayor said: “The coronavirus pandemic has had an unprecedented impact on the global aviation industry – this announcement shows the Government understands how critically important regional airports are to local prosperity and jobs.

“Back in January no one could ever have foreseen what 2020 would have in store, but despite the setbacks the airport continues to move forward and we are already putting the building blocks in place for a strong 2021.

“We’ve re-introduced a route back to London Heathrow, we have an ever growing summer 2021 schedule, Loganair is returning to our airport and TUI, the UK’s biggest holiday firm, will once again fly from Teesside in 2022 after a nine-year absence.”

Mr Houchen said the airport was more than just about summer holiday flights and work was continuing to take advantage of the opportunities available from the whole airport site.

This included spades being in the ground on a new £200m logistics and manufacturing park on the south side of the airport, which when fully operational could create 4,400 jobs.

Meanwhile, the mayor said the airport had not made any redundancies, despite the aviation sector going through a difficult time.

Currently 68 members of staff have been furloughed in some capacity, in line with a reduction in commercial/passenger flights, but they are continuing to receive their usual salaries as a Government contribution to the costs is being topped up.

Following the start of the second national lockdown earlier this month schedules were temporarily revised, allowing for a single daily Monday to Friday route to and from Aberdeen and a return service to Belfast City airport on Monday to Fridays to ensure essential workers can still travel for work.

The airport has been closed to passengers during the weekends, but has remained open operationally to provide services for Cobham Aviation, the military, medical flights and private jet flights seven days a week.

The period of reduced footfall has been used to continue improvements in the terminal building with a £1m overhaul of the security area taking place and a new look for the arrivals hall.

In August in an interview with the Local Democracy Reporting Service, Mr Houchen said the airport – which is now operated by Stobart Aviation – was losing £2m a year.

But he said “money had been set aside to cope with that” and as part of a ten year plan it would begin to break even and move into profit by year six or seven.