Tandridge's preferred Local Plan strategy puts 2,250 homes, two schools and a health facility on the 236-hectare airfield east of Redhill. Comments close 11.59pm on Wednesday 2 September.

Tandridge District Council wants to build around 2,250 homes at Redhill Aerodrome. It is the council’s preferred option, it is out for public comment now, and the deadline falls at 11.59pm on Wednesday 2 September 2026 (Tandridge District Local Plan 2024 to 2044).

The airfield lies just outside the Reigate & Banstead boundary, in Nutfield parish. But the land it sits on runs up to the eastern edge of Redhill, and the council’s own site assessment describes it as separated from the urban area of Redhill and East Surrey Hospital only by intervening fields. Two Reigate & Banstead borough councillors sit on the aerodrome’s consultative committee. Anyone in Redhill, Earlswood, Salfords or South Nutfield has a stake in this, and can respond to a consultation run by a council they do not vote for.

Here is what the documents actually say.

What is proposed

The council has set out four options for where growth goes across Tandridge. Two of them include the aerodrome:

  • Option 1: development distributed proportionately down the settlement hierarchy.
  • Option 2: Option 1, plus around 2,250 homes at Redhill Aerodrome.
  • Option 3: capacity-led dispersed growth across settlements throughout the district.
  • Option 4: Option 3, plus around 2,250 homes at Redhill Aerodrome.

Option 4 is the council’s preferred strategy. The consultation document describes it as combining “strategic infrastructure-led growth at Redhill Aerodrome with a flexible, evidence-led dispersed pattern across the district” (Regulation 18 Spatial Development Strategy Consultation, July 2026).

The council is careful to say no decision has been taken. Its own wording is that the aerodrome is “included only as a potential strategic option for consultation”, and that if responses do not support the approach, it may decide not to progress the site.

The site itself

The land is registered in the council’s land availability assessment as NUT014, Redhill Aerodrome, Redhill, Surrey RH1 5JZ. The assessment records:

  • a site area of 236.32 hectares
  • Green Belt, with release requiring “exceptional circumstances” to be demonstrated
  • the eastern part in Flood Zones 2 and 3, with pockets of surface water flooding across the site
  • ancient woodland adjacent to the west
  • single ownership, and available for development “immediately”
  • the site submitted by a developer

The council’s own sustainability scoring is not flattering. It answers “Yes” to whether the site is isolated from large built-up areas, gives it a connectivity score of 34, and concludes there is “likely to be a reliance on private vehicle use”, with walking and cycling access to services “somewhat constrained”. Rail is at Earlswood, South Nutfield and Salfords, though it notes access on foot across the site “is not uniformly convenient” (Nutfield HELAA proformas, June 2026).

The initial conclusion on suitability is a single phrase: under assessment.

What the developer says it would build

The infrastructure package in the consultation comes from the site promoter, not from the council. The council presents it as the promoter’s concept and repeatedly qualifies it. On that basis, the scheme would include:

  • a two-form entry primary school with early years provision
  • a four-form entry secondary school, with an all-through school named as a possible alternative
  • around 300 key worker affordable and intermediate homes, intended in part to help East Surrey Hospital recruit and retain staff
  • a health facility or land for one, a community hub, a day nursery and sports facilities
  • a neighbourhood centre with convenience retail, a cafe, a pharmacy and a gym
  • employment floorspace, including refurbished existing business space and new light industrial units
  • provision for Gypsy and Traveller accommodation, and self-build and custom-build plots
  • bus service enhancements, active travel routes and local highway works

The developer told the council the site could start delivering early in the plan period, with peak delivery of around 300 homes a year.

The drainage question matters to Salfords and Earlswood

Two watercourses named in the flood mitigation package will be familiar to anyone in the south of this borough: Redhill Brook and the Salfords Stream. The promoter’s material includes culvert removal, channel improvements, a bridge replacement, bunding and earthworks to manage extreme events, plus a surface water management strategy.

The consultation also records that the Crab Hill Lane sewage works would need upgrading to take the development, subject to further work with the Environment Agency and Thames Water.

Those are the same watercourses the Environment Agency flood warning service covers at Redhill and Salfords. A scheme that de-culverts and widens them could reduce flood risk downstream. A scheme that hard-surfaces 2,250 homes’ worth of land upstream could do the opposite. The evidence to settle that has not been published yet.

Bar chart of Tandridge District's 15-year housing requirement of 12,285 homes, split into 2,250 at Redhill Aerodrome, about 2,000 existing planning commitments and 8,035 still to be found elsewhere

Why Tandridge says it needs the site

The government’s standard method gives Tandridge a housing requirement of 819 homes a year, or 12,285 homes over the 15-year plan period. Because of past under-delivery, the council must add a 20% buffer when calculating its five-year land supply, which currently takes the figure to 983 a year.

Against that, the district already has around 2,000 homes with planning permission or otherwise committed.

So the aerodrome’s 2,250 homes would cover about 18% of the requirement. Existing commitments cover another 16%. That leaves roughly 8,035 homes to be found elsewhere in the district, whichever option is chosen. The site does not remove the pressure on Tandridge’s villages, and the council’s own assessment of Option 2 concedes as much.

What the aerodrome has said

The aerodrome has published nothing about the Local Plan. Its most recent news post, on 7 July 2026, congratulates a trainee air traffic controller on qualifying.

Its own consultative committee minutes are more revealing. At the meeting on 18 November 2025, chaired by the Surrey county councillor for Earlswood & Reigate South and attended by two Reigate & Banstead borough councillors, the chairman of Redhill Aerodrome Ventures Limited was asked directly about development proposals for the site (RACC minutes, 18 November 2025).

His answer, recorded in the minutes, was that “nothing has changed” and that “there is not a discussion at the moment of taking Redhill Aerodrome out of the green belt”. He set out the range of possibilities as running from closing the aerodrome and building 10,000 houses at one extreme, to expanding aviation by building a hard runway at the other. He also confirmed the company “still have a contractual agreement with Thakeham Homes”.

The same minutes set out the business case behind all of this:

  • aircraft movements were 35,000 in 2023, 32,000 in 2024 and 27,000 by the November 2025 meeting
  • the estate pays around £700,000 a year in business rates, including on runways the aerodrome says it is often unable to use because of poor weather
  • airside activities are loss-making; commercial rents are what keep the site at or near break-even
  • one major tenant had given notice, which the chief executive attributed to the lack of transport links to the site
  • £30,000 had been spent on new drainage and soakaways, and the committee was told the Environment Agency had not cleared the brook in the chief executive’s time there

The aerodrome is also the base for the Kent Surrey Sussex Air Ambulance and the National Police Air Service, according to the aerodrome’s own website. Neither the consultation nor the site assessment says what would happen to those operations.

What it means for you

If you want to comment, you have until 11.59pm on Wednesday 2 September 2026. You do not have to live in Tandridge to respond. There are three routes:

  • online, through the “Have your say” link on the council’s Local Plan page
  • by email to localplan@tandridge.gov.uk
  • by post to The Planning Policy Team, Council Offices, 8 Station Road East, Oxted RH8 0BT

Paper copies of the documents and the survey are at the council offices in Oxted and at Caterham, Oxted, Warlingham and Lingfield libraries. The eight public exhibition events all took place in July and have finished, as has the online question and answer session, though the webcast remains available on the council’s site for six months.

Question 6 of the consultation survey asks directly: to what extent do you support a strategic development site at Redhill Aerodrome?

If you are watching the wider picture, this is a Regulation 18 consultation. It sets the strategy, not the site boundaries or the layout. A Regulation 19 draft plan comes next, then examination by a planning inspector, then adoption. Any actual housing would need planning permission after that, and the council says the aerodrome’s inclusion depends on Green Belt assessment, transport evidence, flood risk assessment and sustainability appraisal work that has not been completed.

If your concern is closer to home, the applications currently in front of Reigate & Banstead are listed on our Reigate planning applications page, and what borough house prices are doing is on our Reigate house prices page.

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