By
Harry Harrison
Local Democracy Reporter
Published 25th Feb 2026, 17:07 GMT
The City of Doncaster Council has remained silent after dozens of pages from the confidential lease agreement with the Peel Group for Doncaster Sheffield Airport (DSA) was leaked on social media.
Screenshots of pages and, at one stage, a downloadable PDF were posted on local
Facebook groups over the weekend and on Monday, February 23, 2026.
Not all pages in the DSA lease between
Doncaster Council and Peel are contained within the screenshots or downloadable file, however, the
Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) confirmed the pages were included in the documents leaked to the media in January 2026.
The LDRS approached Doncaster Council asking for the latest leak, but did not receive any response.
by Taboola
The DSA lease agreed in March 2024 has been leaked on social media. | Tony Johnson
Following the leak to journalists in January, Doncaster Council offered city
councillors copies of the lease, so long as they signed an agreement not to discuss the details openly.
The agreement was labelled a “gag order” by opposition councillors who refused to sign.
However, the LDRS understands that some councillors who did not sign the agreement to view the lease were able to download the PDF document leaked on social media.
One of those is the Advance UK group leader, Councillor Nicola Brown, who said she found the document “deeply concerning”.
“As a councillor representing one of the most deprived wards in the borough, I cannot stay silent when public money is being handled in this way,” Cllr Brown, who was elected to represent Adwick & Carcroft in May 2025, said.
“This lease appears to hand significant financial advantage to Peel, the very company that closed our airport, while locking Doncaster taxpayers into escalating costs for generations,” she added.
Councillor Nicola Brown said no opposition councillors signed the “gag order”. | Nicola Brown
Reporting by the LDRS and Yorkshire Post in January 2026 revealed a number of clauses in the lease agreement, including break clauses linked to planning approvals and passenger targets higher than the council’s own high-end projections.
The lease is actively being renegotiated, as required by the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority (SYMCA) in September 2025.
In a recent statement to the LDRS, Mayor
Ros Jones said the renegotiations were “progressing well” and “almost completed”.