Commentary Part 1 – Airports Licences Section 15: Granting licence
79.This section states the process the CAA must comply with before granting a licence and before the licence comes into force. This section includes a requirement for the CAA to consult for a reasonable period on proposed licence conditions and states that a new licence may not include conditions which differ significantly from those on which it has consulted.
80.After the notice that the licence has been granted has been published by the CAA, the licence cannot come into force for at least six weeks. The notice must specify certain matters, including the reasons for the conditions included in the licence, how the CAA has taken into account representations made and the reasons for any differences from the conditions initially proposed. This is stated in subsection (7). An application for permission to appeal against the CAA’s decision to include or exclude a licence condition by the licence holder and/or airlines that are materially affected by the decision can be made during the six week period after publication of the notice. Appeals about the inclusion or exclusion of conditions in a new licence are dealt with in section 24 and Schedule 2. For convenience reference is made in this section of the commentary to particular provisions of Schedule 2, in addition to the separate commentary on that Schedule that appears below.
81.Paragraph 10 of Schedule 2 states that if an application to suspend a licence condition is made in the six week period, the licence condition does not come into effect for ten weeks from the date of publication of the notice of the decision to grant the licence. This extension is to give the Competition Commission at least four weeks to consider the application for a direction to suspend the licence condition before it would otherwise come into effect. The grounds upon which such a direction may be given are set out at paragraph 11(2) of Schedule 2 and the effects of such a direction at paragraph 11(3).
82.Subsection (9) provides that if the CAA grants a licence in advance of a person becoming the operator (of all or part of an area), the licence does not come into force until that person becomes the operator (of all or part of the area).