A NEW airport between Chepstow and Newport could serve the whole of south Wales and the west of England, says a thinktank.

The Institute for Welsh Affairs (IWA) says the Welsh Government should go ahead with its proposed purchase of Cardiff Airport but plan long-term to replace both it and Bristol Airport with a new facility on Severnside.

It is not the first time Severnside has been targeted as a potential home for an airport – 30 years ago the then Gwent County Council put serious support behind a proposal and a decade ago Newport Council commissioned a report.

The IWA will submit its proposal for a "state-of-the-art, 24-hour Severnside passenger and cargo airport" to the UK government's airports commission.

The commission has been asked to look at airport capacity in London taking account of national, regional and local implications of any proposals.

Aviation consultant John Borkowski, who wrote the report for the IWA, said decisions on London airports could mean a serious worsening of air connectivity elsewhere.

He said: "This would be particularly severe if it is decided to opt for an airport development on the east side of London.

"Unless a new level of air service provision can be created for south Wales and the West it will entail a significant loss of economic competitiveness for both regions."

The airport would take 10 years to plan and build but would provide Wales and the west of England "with a better service than anything that could be developed separately at Bristol and Cardiff."

Noise would be minimised with planes taking off and landing over water and the co-ordinated closure of the current airports would mean it would have between 10 million and 11 million passengers from the start.

Mr Borkowski said: "We believe our recommendations deserve to be taken seriously by governments in London and Cardiff and by the business communities of Wales and the west of England.

"The Welsh Government had done absolutely the right thing in seeking to gain greater control over the future of our air connectivity.

"This takes the thinking a stage further. If the Welsh economy is to prosper this is the kind of big scale, long-term thinking that it needs."