Luton’s community-led airport with Nick Platts

Exploring Luton Rising's Community-Owned Airport Expansion Welcome to the Infrastructure podcast. My name is Anthony Oliver and today we are taking a look at airport development and specifically how, contrary perhaps to popular belief, it can actually positively benefit local communities. To do this we're going to focus on Luton Rising, the community owned owner of London Luton Airport and the driving force behind one of EU KS most ambitious aviation expansion projects. A £2.4 billion investment that will increase capacity from 19 to 32,000,000 passengers per year through the development of a second terminal. And at the heart of the plan is Nick Platz, Managing Director of Luton Rising. For the last 2 1/2 years he has been immersed in this vast and ambitious project and last April he successfully guided the project towards the approval of Design Consent Order DCO for this important piece of nationally significant infrastructure. But this is far more than a transport and infrastructure story, as EU KS only 100% community owned airport, Luton Rising channels its profits directly back into local services and community projects, and that's over a half a billion pounds since 1997. As such, the project represents not only a major boost for the regional economy, contributing an estimated 1.5 billion annually to GDP and creating thousands of jobs, but also a pioneering example of how growth, sustainability and social value can align under public ownership. So lots to talk about as we explore. It makes Luton Rising models so distinctive and how it navigated the complex, nationally significant infrastructure project process to get to the starting blocks ready to turn their ambitions into reality. So let's hear more, Nick. Welcome to the Infrastructure Podcast. Speaker 2 Good day answering how? Speaker 1 Are you very good? Thanks. Very good. Well, big plans you've got there at London Luton Airport, Nick. So kick off. So what exactly is Luton Rising and what's your vision for airport expansion? Speaker 2 So Luton Rising is a perfect SLED public airport company. Luton Airport was always a Municipal Airport and in the 80s with the changing legislation, we became a public airport company. And so Luton Rising is the subsidiary of the council which owns Luton Airport. And over the years that was the focus. And up until probably about eight years ago, we started to diversify into some infrastructure ourselves with the Luton Dart and some commercial development properties around the airport. But effectively we're owned by the council, we own the airport and all of that is set up, as you said, for community. Speaker 1 Benefit, right? So why now? Why expansion now? Speaker 2 Well, I think the demand for for flying is insatiable and the growth that we're seeing both pre COVID and since the DMT forecast, everybody else shows us that there is a demand for travel and that's not going away. We want to be part of that. The benefits that we we accrue from having the airport here, it's the 5th largest commercial airport in the UK that in that drives the level of investment and economic activity in the town. And at a time when manufacturing has has left the town, you know, some big announcements recently, the airport is now the biggest single site employer. And so it's important that the airport maintains its relevance and taps into that background growth that the UK is experiencing. Speaker 1 What's interesting, because you know, when you think about airports around London, certainly Heathrow and Gatwick take all the limelight. Certainly Luton tends to fly under the radar quite a, quite a bit to use a, an aviation term. But you know, what's the overall scope of the project? I mean, what is £2.4 billion by London Luton Airport? Speaker 2 Well, it's more than a terminal, I'm pleased to say. So really the focus from the expansion is how do you get more passengers through the runway so the runway is capable. We don't need to do anything with that. We're making best use of that single runway that we have, but it's slightly inefficient in its current design. So we need to put in some rapid exit entry points onto the runway that improves the runway throughput. To serve the runway, you need some more taxiways. To serve the taxiways, you need more stands. And if you've got more stands, more aircraft, you're going to have more people. So we need more passenger handling. That's where the additional terminal capacity comes in. And if you're doing all of that, you then also need supporting infrastructure. You need the surface access to be right. And also in the the big ticket bill, but often isn't talked about is those community enhancements that go with it. So we've got a very enhanced noise insulation scheme for those that are affected by the expansion and we're focusing a lot on the community side of things and that all comes at a cost. Enhancing Airport Connectivity with the Luton Dart System Yeah. I mean, you, you mentioned earlier the Luton Dart. Just tell us a bit what what exactly how do you describe Luton Dart and how does it fit in? How do you plan to expand that whole surface access issue? Speaker 2 Yeah. So Luton Dart is a cable way system that connects the National Railway station at Luton Airport Parkway with the terminal. And it replaced the old diesel bus service that used to run every 10 minutes. And so it was a way of building additional capacity, decarbonizing that shuttle service and providing a much better customer experience. So you now have step free access from anywhere on the National Rail network into the terminal. It's a short cable way system. So we looked at the heavy rail light rail and we went to the cable way Doppelmire system. It's fantastic. If you haven't used it, I encourage you to use it. And it is sized. We built it with the capacity of a bigger airport in mind. So it's future proofed, it provides a better customer experience and it decarbonized what was and and it's proving really popular. Speaker 1 But so it's part of the the, the expansion plans. When you get the new rail systems or the new buses going into the airport, you'll have the capacities to take passengers to the to the terminal. Speaker 2 Yeah. So the conversation now is with the train operating companies to say, look, we've got this great connection and we've got 2 train operating companies that that serve Luton Airport Parkway, both fantastic operators and we work really well with them. But St. Pancras to the terminal in as little as 32 minutes if you use EMRS Luton Express in the dark and that's all Step 3. So it's fast and efficient. And now what we need to do is work both with the talks but also Network Rail or what will become GDR is how do we increase the frequency of those mainline services and how do we improve the reliability of those services. Because at 3:00 in the morning, when you're coming to the airport for that first early departure, you want to know that you're going to have public transport available to use. And that's what we need to do for expansion. We need to get surface access modal share to 38%. So we're looking at how do you encourage people regionally, nationally to use that, that rail DART connection to get to the airport? Speaker 1 Going from 19,000,000 to 32,000,000 passengers a year, the net that's, that's a big leap, isn't it? Does that extra demand, does that factor in growth that Heathrow and Gatwick at the same time or is this how does the region support that kind of case? Understanding Luton's Growth in the London Airport System Well, I think you've got to go back and look at the TCO application. So a lot of the modelling for the expansion was done in the teens, obviously pre COVID. And you could see even then we knew that Gatwick was looking for expand, expanded capacity. We knew Heathrow was looking at a third runway. I mean, I was at Heathrow at that time myself, so very familiar with that scheme. And the DfT put out their own forecast. So the team back in the teams, you know, 20/16/2017, when they're putting the design together, we're looking at the crystal ball and saying, OK, what if Gatwick has a runway but not Heathrow? What if Heathrow gets it, not Gatwick? What if both get it? What if neither get it? What's going to happen? And I think the bottom line was there was going to be growth and the only question is how quickly it arrives in the London system and which airport gets it. So our catchment is different to Heathrow and Gatwick. We serve different markets. We're not a hub airport. We don't have huge transfer numbers, negligible I think really in the scheme of things. So we know our place, we know there's growth coming. We have about 10% of the London system market share at the moment. And if you maintain that as the London system, you know, rising tide lifts all boats. So, yeah, as that background growth comes and if we hold at 10% market share, then naturally we're going to need more people and that starts to arrive around about. So at the moment we're forecasting somewhere around 20-30 that we hit our current capacity. And so we need to be ready to to grow and, and DCO as soon as we activate the DCO that lifts the 19,000,000 capacity and, and we're free to grow up to 32. Speaker 1 We'll, we'll talk about the what you actually your plans are at the moment. We're just going back to the ownership structure. You know you're community owned and the Luton Rising owns the infrastructure. Tell us about how you you work with, I suppose, the local authority, but also the the the the at the airport operator. The Unique Model of Luton's Community-Owned Airport Sure, it's a it's a long story so I'll try and shorten it. Late in the mid 90's, the council, some very brave councillors in in the mid 90s realized that the asset of the airport was was huge to to exploit and to drive growth and provide jobs for the local community. So they took the decision that they wanted to expand the airport because if they didn't do it, they'd miss out and they didn't want to miss out. So right. Yeah, yeah. Back in the day it was PPPPFI type contracts and so they entered into a concession agreement in the late 90s for 30 years to say invest private investor, invest in growth and and that's what's happened. So you look at the growth of Luton Airport since 98 from a public private partnership perspective, it's been a success story. So the operator, it's a joint venture fact majority shareholder there is Iena very well established, reputable, fantastic airport operator globally and their joint venture partners currently Interbridge. So the concession model we have is unique in the UK. So we're community owned. So the airport is, is owned by us at Luton Rising. We're owned by the council. So it's effectively council owned and we we we're proud of that. It's a unique model in the UK, bringing in that specialism of of management to drive what is a a really good product. Speaker 1 And I can, I can see the advantages of that community ownership being that the profits go back into the communities. What what are the the challenges of being owned by the? Speaker 2 Local authority, well, I think the you're right to highlight the benefits. I mean over since the concession came into place over £500 million has gone into the local community either through the council or through the voluntary community sector and that comes from Luton Rising. So we charge a fee for, for the operator to, to exploit the airport, which is normal. We take that fee and we invest most of that in the council and the community. And so the challenge really is making sure that that benefit is shared equitably across the local community. You know, we do try and take a balanced approach. That's the balance. Speaker 1 Between what? Commercial growth ambitions and public accountability and transparency as you have to bring in there the whole time. Speaker 2 So, you know, I'll go back to our purpose. We're here for community benefit. We're here to help lift the town out of poverty. So the council's vision for 2040 is that nobody needs to live in poverty. And so we support and enable that. We want to help them achieve that. So all of our activity, the commercial developments or the airport is driving benefit into the community, not just financial returns, but social value. And so a lot of our investment cases the, the, the financial returns are low and in the commercial world, you probably wouldn't do them, but because they drive such significant social value, we go ahead and do it. So we fit between sort of the public sector, which has a statutory obligation to deliver services and the private sector which is chasing financial returns. We're constantly balancing the two, but it's important to us that the benefits are shared with those most impacted. So it's not just in Luton, although a large chunk of the benefit, the financial benefit flows, but it's also the surrounding area that's managed for us by an independent charity that should Luton Charitable Foundation. And through that we have a number of pots to make sure that some of that money is ring fenced to different parts of the. Speaker 1 Region. Presumably you must have to have quite a lot of governance structures in place to ensure that you do get this balance between economic performance and community benefit, making those decisions, whether you do run things that I suppose less than commercial terms to get a better community benefit out of it. Speaker 2 Yes, we we're kind of in the middle. So we're neither a council department nor are we a private business. So I have the governance associated with a private company under company law. So I have a board of directors and we have obligations and requirements under those rules. And then alongside that sits the the public authority governance. So as our shareholder, they've reserved a a a lot of the decisions on investments to them and we have to go through their internal process to get permission to to expand the airport. Speaker 1 Salsa you, you must have have to have quite a thick skin there then Nick in terms of managing the, the, the politics of it all. Does that political oversight and local expectations, does it does it influence your decision making? Speaker 2 Well, I'm Australian so I'm pretty thick skinned to start with and I think that's a, that's a great benefit for me. And I'm, I've been around a while now and, and I, I, I've experienced politics everywhere I've been. So every company has politics and, and you learn to, to navigate that wherever you are, private or public or in the middle, they're the rules of the game. And you learn to, you learn the process, you learn who the decision makers are and what is it that's important. It takes longer. It can take 5 to 6 months to get a decision where in the private sector you might be able to make that in five or six weeks and you know, so that you build that in. So you just start early. You can't be as reactive as, as perhaps you'd normally be in the private sector. But when you're operating or you own an asset, you know, 1 1/2 billion # asset, you don't tend to want to react and knee jerk. You want to take the time and, and be thoughtful. So, you know, my whole career has been around providing benefits to the community, but the Air Force or FedEx or Heathrow here at Luton it, it is for me, it is about delivering for community benefits, so. Nick Platts' Military and Infrastructure Leadership Insights Well, let's dig a bit more into your career, Nick. As you say, you're from Australia. You began your career as a pilot in the Australian Royal Australian Air Force. How did that experience, I suppose, shape your leadership style today then? Speaker 2 I've sometimes described my Air Force career as my apprenticeship for management. It shapes pretty much everything I do now. It gave me tools and techniques for sure. It gave me confidence, absolutely. It exposed me to different scenarios where you had to apply rules, but you had to think about the application of that. So, you know, I think my leadership style, I describe myself now as a servant leader. What I try and do is set a culture here where in Air Force speak you start with a situation, the context, what's the task permission, How do I want you to achieve it? So in terms of the execution of the plan, what is the plan, what's the strategy? What are the tasks that we need to achieve? What admin and logistics do we have? So the organization we have the resources we have the budget we have and then who's in charge? How do we want to manage the mechanics of communication and, and who's in control, who's responsible, accountable, who's going to be consulted with all those racing type principles and, and then sit back. That's my job. Yes, I've been around airports a long time, but I don't describe myself as an airport guy. I, I, I haven't been in airports for 30 years. I've been in aviation. The airports is a recent thing. So most of the time I'm not the most knowledgeable airport person in the room and I need to let those who are do what they do best. And so I try and set that, that, that environment where here's the mission, here's the, the, the tools you've got. Come back to me if you need more, but otherwise crack on. Let me know how you're getting on and, and, and let them get on with it. So the Air Force for me, you know, yes, of course principles like integrity, you know, honesty, openness, that service, public service element I'll talk about and then tactics for managing stress. You know, I'm quite often I'm sitting in a meeting going. This isn't nearly as bad as a asymmetric impartial instrument approach on ILS, you know, or you know, different scenario chasing submarines, you know, I'll compare it back to that and every day if. Speaker 1 It's not quite as life and death, yes. Speaker 2 Yeah, in my mind, I'm, I'm above the clouds flying because that's. Speaker 1 That's so Do you? Do you still fly? Speaker 2 No, sadly not. I got, I got two kids, three horses and A and a mortgage. So I don't, I don't have the time and, and to be honest, you know, I did it for a long time. And for me flying, the most enjoyable part of flying for me is tactical flying. And unfortunately, the civilian rules don't allow you to do what I did then. Speaker 1 Right. Speaker 2 So I can't fly low enough fast enough. And so that's fine. I, I I I look on longingly as the as the as the aircraft fly overhead on their. Speaker 1 Way to something nice. Well, well, give us AI. Don't know huge amount, but I'm sure huge amounts about military aircraft. But they were fast jets. You flew that, did you, when you were in the Air Force. Speaker 2 I flew the Mison P3C Orion, which is a maritime patrol aircraft and submarine hunter, and I also flew the what was then called the Hawker Sibley 748 and BA748 teaching navigators. But yeah, most of my flying was in the mighty P3. Speaker 1 All right. Very good, very good. You mentioned your post Air Force career. You worked at FedEx and you worked at Heathrow, but you also LED Saudi Arabia's first economic zone development. I mean how, what tell us about that. How did that inform your understanding I suppose of large scale infrastructure delivery? Speaker 2 I kind of fell into that role. I was asked to go out and support Riyadh airport, develop their cargo strategy, having done that at Heathrow. And so my first year I was at Riyadh airport and they wanted me to secure this, this opportunity economic zone, which was on a corner of their land. And so I got talking to the regulator and, and the government officials involved in that project and through circumstance and various meetings and, and, and things that I did in that in that first year, I was asked to, to run the project on behalf of, of the, of the, the government regulator. And so my only prior to that, my only experience of infrastructure development was at Heathrow getting involved in the third runway and I was the internal cargo specialist, so. I sat in a lot of meetings and saw how things were done, but was never really responsible or accountable for for it. And so I found myself in a situation where really I was the first person in the company. So we were establishing A subsidiary. So we had an SPV carve off to sort out and we had to complete the detailed design master planning for 748 site, Greenfield site and we also had to build the first facility for, well, it's now public. So at the time we couldn't talk about it. But Apple wanted to open a facility in the Kingdom. So we had a target, we had a deadline date, we had an anchor tenant and it was a case of get on with it. Had a great team of contractors and consultants that helped and slowly, slowly we started to bring in some, some support locally to build the company up and, and make it happen. And we did it. We, we about 3 months late on, on delivery date, but that was largely driven by Apple's contractor who wanted some changes made to the building. But apart from that, we, we were there and, and you see the success of it now. There's a lot of big companies operating out there now. Speaker 1 So contrast that experience with your work. That Heathrow on the Runway 3, which I think you probably describe as being a slightly slower burn project at Heathrow. Do you think the Heathrow runway through will ever happen? Speaker 2 That's a, that's a, a complicated question really, because there was so many, there is so much involved, you know, and it depends on your point of view, the level of investment required, the, the, the construction itself, the complexity of the phasing of the construction, the number of services involved, the earthworks involved. It's a complicated thing. They're absolutely up for the challenge. The guys there are brilliant and I've no doubt that they can deliver the scheme should they get permission to, to go ahead. I wish them luck. Well, the DCO process is not easy. It's very long, it's very expensive and you know, but they've got the right people in support. There's a there's a lot of very far more knowledgeable people than me to to help them get through. Overcoming Hurdles in the DCO Planning Approval Process The DCO process, well we'll talk a bit in a minute about your own DCO approval process for Luton. But to forget what you mentioned, that you're not no longer flying but you do a bit of you got horses, is is that what you spend your time doing now? You riding horses around Bedfordshire? Speaker 2 I tend to be spending my time either as dad's taxi or doing dad's jokes. Either way you know I I get abused now. Speaker 1 And how old are your kids then? Oh. Speaker 2 I've got two teenagers, 11's just gone to uni and the other's just started GCSE so no. My focus is then and and the house and and I get back to Australia occasionally. I used to sail but I'm about as far from the ocean as you can get in the UK in all directions, so that's not an option and the ward. So I'm not sure I'd probably. Speaker 1 Want to do it anyway you say that, but I started doing all my sailing around that way and it's some some old clay pits near Bedfordshire. So you know it's it is possible, It is possible. Speaker 2 It it is, and I did do I, I did sail on an inland old inland quarry for a while. It just, yeah, it was, it was not the same. Speaker 1 It's a bit chilly, yeah. Compared to Australia, yeah, I suppose everything's a bit chilly. Anyway, let's talk about the DCO process. You got approval in April. It was a major milestone. What, what would you say were the biggest hurdles along the way for that then? Speaker 2 Oh goodness, it probably wasn't one single big hurdle. There were just lots of medium sized hurdles. You know, the process is defined, but there's so much within that. COVID probably was the biggest issue that we had. You know, the we had to take our consultation online. So that changed the way you engage not just with the community, but with your design team, your planning team, the lawyers and getting everything ready. So there's so many moving parts and so many elements that you've got to pull together. So we had public consultations pre COVID that changed the, the, the design slightly, it reduced the capacity. So, you know, I think there was some, some thoughts of, of going higher than 32, but based on that community feedback, you know, we settled on that 32,000,000 level and which is right. But then that that just complicated the process of consultation and planning and preparing and then the submission itself. It's a big document. So it is, I think the biggest hurdle is really making sure you've got the right people with the right experience and you keep their energy levels up. Speaker 1 Any lessons for other similar public sector promoters trying to go through a similar planning process So. Speaker 2 For us, I think it it it was maintaining that focus on community benefit. So from an airport perspective, you know, we have this concept of balanced approach where the impacts of expansion of the airports are mitigated in the community. So you balance the mitigation with the impacts and you make sure that you're doing the best you can for those most affected and you share the benefits across the area that's affected, not not just holding on to it yourself. So for us, that that was the focus. How do you drive economic growth? And from that economic growth comes jobs, comes in with investments, comes, you know, all the national benefits. And so stay focused on the prize. Plan early, allow extra time because it never goes according to plan. And then when you get to the examining phase, you, yeah, you, you kind of a passenger at that point and you just need to allow the process to unfold. The, the, yeah, the rounds of consultations we faced was higher than we expected. So there were more rounds of questions coming out of the department than we budgeted for and, and planned for. But but that's fine. You know that's the way the process works. Speaker 1 Do you think the proposed planning and infrastructure bill will make a difference to future DCO processes? Will that make it more efficient perhaps? Speaker 2 I'm sure it will. And I think anything that that gives you certainty on time scales has got to help. Anything that helps reduce the cost of going through helps. Anything that ensures the community consultation is there is is all good. I think the thing I've noticed is that there's been a number of airport projects that have been challenged through the courts. Yeah. And we're in that process now. So I don't really want to talk too much about it, about our particular case. You know, we're in court a couple of days ago and we're waiting for the judge's decision. But I would just make the point that there's been a number of airport expansion programs that have gone through the judicial review process and the challenges being made are very similar in theme and context. And I just wonder is that is that what was meant by by the NSIP project? So I'm absolutely all for challenge over poor decisions and poor projects that the community has to have a right to challenge these decisions. It's legally sound and all the rest of it. It's just the mechanics of it, the process of it, because I think there's a huge level of uncertainty right now on our project because of this process. And we're having to do some things at risk. And if the process carries on too long, then we'll have to stop investing, we'll have to stop the project, which delights the benefits. And that's not really what. Speaker 1 Everybody wants, which of course is one of the core parts of the planning and infrastructure bill, is to try to tighten that whole process up really around judicial review. Speaker 2 I think it's, I think it's just providing certainty on time scale. So we can we can price and plan for a set time period. So it's just having certainty on that giving the community the opportunity to challenge decisions. Absolutely right. So it is literally just how, how do you shorten the process? How do you provide certainty but still balancing everybody's right to to challenge what's. The Future of Luton Airport: Next Steps and Community Impact Happening Well, what happens next then? Assuming that you get through these judgements, what's the immediate next steps for the project? Speaker 2 So we're, we're still getting on with things. So, you know, as a lot of people might know, when it comes to a project at this scale, getting planning permission is, is, is the early step. There's still a lot to do after that. So the concept design that you see in our application, we're now filling in the details on that, moving towards detailed design. So we're progressing towards the reader stage one, we're refining the design. The made order we received wasn't quite what we were expecting. So some of the conditions within the made order, we've just had to go back and check does the scheme meet with those requirements. And I think one of the big things that sat in there that that we hadn't expected was the requirement for 12 months of monitoring prior to activating the DCO. So we have to do a full 12 months of monitoring. The DCO says that has to start in in a January. Speaker 1 This is for monitoring of what noise and air, air pollution and yeah, so. Speaker 2 We proposed the concept called green control growth and within that there are four elements around noise, carbon, air quality and surface access. And we propose that there are limits on those four things. And if we can't demonstrate the growth can be achieved whilst remaining within those limits, then we just won't expand. And so we'd said that we would do monitoring to baseline it, but we would do that a little bit later in the process. And the DCO tells us to do it before we start. So it's specified January to December. So we have to start in January 26th or January 27 or January 28th. We're targeting January 26th. So we're gearing up procurement for that and the plans to to put the monitoring in place. We have to do 12 months of monitoring, after which we get some information from the CIA, prepare some reports, submit those to an environmental scrutiny group in the middle of 27 and they will then tell us, yes, we agree you can release capacity whilst remaining below those limits so you can crack on. We release that capacity into the market around about October 27 and it would be summer 28 in the AV, 8 in the airport game. You talk summer and winter season, so summer 28 is where the the capacity first starts to appear. So it's a long process and we're always looking for value engineering to design at 2.4 billion, that's old money. That's 2019 prices. Cost inflation, especially in the construction industry has gone up, but also background inflation. So that scheme in in 2019 numbers was 2.4 and in 2025 numbers it's 3.7, right? Yeah. So it's we've got to get the price down to make it economically viable or commercially viable I should say. And so we're going through the design at the moment looking at the constraints within the DCO to say, can we, can we do something slightly differently within the constraints, the DCO that delivers a more affordable product and that's, that's right where we are now. Speaker 1 And the target for actually having an open and working terminal. Speaker 2 So the DCO talks about Terminal 2 coming online in the mid twenty 30s around 20352036 and but that's subject to demand. So we've just remodeled the forecasts. We don't think we need that 32,000,000 capacity as early as we projected. So that capacity will come online a little bit later we think, but we still expect to achieve 32,000,000 throughputs in the mid to late 24 years. Speaker 1 So for a project like this, you know, what does success look like for the community benefit? You know, as as construction progresses, because presumably the community benefits starts coming through, you know, before it's actually complete and up and running, there's a whole lot of work and a whole lot of activity going on which generates community benefit. Speaker 2 The first element is the social value. So jobs will create jobs through the construction phase. And as the, you know, whether we're expanding the existing terminal or preparing for the second terminal, there'll be some building works, there'll be construction works, there'll be trades required to, to put that in place. So the first jobs appearing will be in that supply chain and that that construction side of the industry. And then as that that infrastructure is is finished, then we move into the service related jobs. So the ground handling, security, airline staff, management, airport operations, but it's, it is around jobs and we've got to create high quality jobs. And when I was at Heathrow, John Holland Kay was my CEO and I absolutely plagiarize his ambition and I make no apologies for it because it's fantastic. He always said to us he wanted the future chief executive of the airport to come from the local community. And I want that for Luton Airport. I want our chief executive to come from Luton Town and that's 2025 years in the making. And so we've got to provide the pathways for the kids today. So we've got to get into the schools to make sure they do the right subjects, they've got the right motivation, we get their attention, get them into the airport and and we can make that happen. Speaker 1 Loads and loads of really brilliant opportunity you've got there and a great project you've got going on there. Nick. So what what do you hope the Luton Rising story says about the future of local authority and you know, local authority LED infrastructure in the UK? Final Thoughts on Luton's Pioneering Infrastructure Project Is it something which we're going to see more or? Speaker 2 It depends on the scheme, but I, I would say that it works. So it, it, it absolutely works where you've got the right relationship and the right structures in place. You can absolutely deliver infrastructure, quality infrastructure in a, in a partnering way between the public and private sectors. So absolutely, local authorities should take advantage of the assets they have. Yes, Luton Council's benefit is they had an airport in their borough and not everybody has that. So use the assets you've got, partner with with the private sector and in return the community benefits through economic growth, jobs and contributions either through the council itself or the voluntary community sector. We're the most socially impactful airport in the UK. You know £0.50 per passenger going towards local community from Loop and Horizon. No other airport owner I'm aware of in the UK does that, so it's right, it works. And I would encourage local authorities everywhere to look at what assets they have and make best use of them in partnership. Yeah. Speaker 1 No, well, it's it's an interesting, really interesting story given that the certainly nationally the government is looking at investment in infrastructure as this, you know, the driver for growth, any bit of infrastructure asset that they can use to provide resources for the whole community, it can't be turned away. So thanks so much Nick, for joining me today and for explaining this really interesting challenge is a fascinating project. You've got a lot you've got a lot of work ahead of you. I have to say you've got a lot of work ahead of you, but certainly you're on track now and having got the DCA, that's a great milestone. So look, thanks for sharing it and thanks for joining me today on the Infrastructure Podcast. Speaker 2 It's a pleasure anytime. Speaker 1 Great stuff. Thanks very much Sadly, that's all we've got time for today, but we have more in the pipeline, more guests to talk to as we continue to probe the big issues faced across the sector. If you haven't done so already, do take check out the infrastructure podcast website www.infrastructure-podcast.com where you'll find background information and all the latest podcasts to listen to and to share. So thanks for joining us. Thanks again to Nick for sharing Luton Rising story and I look. Speaker 2 Forward to seeing you. Speaker 1 Again very soon.