The Airports (Northern Ireland) Order 1994

Power to acquire land compulsorily

3.—(1) This Article applies to any regulated airport, other than a regulated airport managed by a district council under Article 17.

(2) The airport operator of an airport to which this Article applies may for any purpose connected with the safe and efficient performance of his functions as such acquire land compulsorily.

(3) The power of an airport operator to acquire land compulsorily under this Article may be exercised for the purpose of providing or improving any road which is to be provided or improved in pursuance of an order under Article 10 or for any other purpose for which land is required in connection with such an order.

(4) The power of an airport operator to acquire land compulsorily under this Article includes power to acquire, by the creation of a new right, an easement or other right over land.

(5) Where an airport operator proposes to acquire land compulsorily under this Article, the operator may apply to the Department for an order (“a vesting order”) vesting that land in the operator and the Department shall have power to make a vesting order.

(6) Schedule 6 to the Local Government Act (Northern Ireland) 1972(1) shall apply for the purposes of the acquisition of land by means of a vesting order made under this Article in the same manner as it applies to the acquisition of land by means of a vesting order made under that Act subject to the following modifications—

(a) for any reference to the council there shall be substituted a reference to the airport operator;

(b) for any reference to the Department concerned there shall be substituted a reference to the Department;

(c) for any reference to that Act there shall be substituted a reference to this Order;

(d) in paragraph 6(2) for the words from “the fund” onwards there shall be substituted “funds of the airport operator (in this Schedule referred to as “the compensation fund”), and shall be discharged by payments made by the airport operator”; and

(e) in paragraph 12(2) for “the clerk of the council” there shall be substituted “such person as may be designated for the purposes of this Schedule by the airport operator”.

(7) The power to make a vesting order under this Article in respect of land—

(a) which is the property of any public body which has power under any statutory provision to acquire land compulsorily; or

(b) which is declared by or under any statutory provision to be inalienable,

shall not, where representations objecting to the proposal for making the order have been duly made by the owner of the land and have not been withdrawn, be exercised in relation to that land unless the proposal for making the order has been approved by a resolution of the Assembly.

(8) In paragraph (7) “public body” means a body established by or under any statutory provision.

(1)

1972 c. 9 (N.I.)