Heathrow third runway will blight another 200,000 lives.
By Ben Webster, Transport Correspondence
The Times.

The Government was accused yesterday of "burying" the true number of people who would be affected by excessive noise if a third runway is built at Heathrow.

Ministers published a consultation paper last summer stating that by 2015, a total of 333,000 people would be exposed to noise levels of at least 57 decibels from the proposed new short runway and the existing two long runways. The Government deems 57db to cause "the onset of significant community annoyance".

The paper argued for the new runway, stating that 26,000 people would be added to the 307,000 currently suffering 57 decibels. Ministers claimed that the benefits of allowing an extra 27 million passengers to use Heathrow outweighed the disturbance suffered by residents.

However, a "supporting technical report" by Halcrow Fox, the Government's consultants on the third runway, states that the actual population exposed to 57db could rise to 513,000, an extra 206,000 people. The technical report was not distributed with the consultation paper and was available only on request from the Department for Transport.

John Stewart, the chairman of ClearSkies, which campaigns against aircraft noise, said: "Once again the Department for Transport has been caught burying key facts and figures in obscure documents which most people have never seen."

Halcrow Fox said that the 333,000 figure published by the Government is based on a series of "challenging assumptions" about the airline industry's progress in developing quieter aircraft.

They have become significantly quieter with the introduction of new engine technology, but the industry has stated that the early gains cannot be repeated. Further reductions in noise will be achieved much more slowly.

Manufacturers also face the dilemma that muffling jets may increase harmful emissions by raising fuel consumption. The industry has refused to set a date for phasing out the noisiest aircraft using Heathrow, known as Chapter 3 aircraft.

A spokesman for the department said that it had used the 333,000 figure "because that is what we want the industry to achieve".

He said ministers would attach strict noise conditions to any decision allowing a third runway to be built, possibly including restricting the type of aircraft that could land on it. Such restrictions could prevent some African and Asian airlines with elderly fleets from landing at Heathrow.

Mr Stewart said, however, that the history of Heathrow's development was littered with broken promises and any guarantees given on noise could be revised once the runway opened. Six months after approving Terminal Five with a maximum of 480,000 flights a year, the Government announced that a third runway would push up the number of flights to 655,000.

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The UK Government and airlines

By Chris Mullin, Labour MP and Former Aviation Minister

14 January 2003.
Evening Standard

The news that a third runway at Heathrow could expose 200,000 more people than previously thought to unacceptable levels of noise will come as no surprise to students of the aviation industry.

There is a long history of undertakings being given in return for controversial airport expansions which are either quietly forgotten or cynically abandoned once they become inconvenient.

During my 18 undistinguished months as a minister whose responsibilities included aviation, I learned two things. First, that the demands of the aviation industry are insatiable. Second, that successive governments have usually given way to them.

Although nowadays the industry pays lip service to the notion of sustainability, its demands are essentially unchanged. It wants more of everything - airports, runways, terminals.

The industry is not even prepared to negotiate seriously on such relatively resolvable problems as the 16 night flights which daily disrupt the sleep of several hundred thousand Londoners and are a source of continual complaint. During my time as aviation minister I had difficulty persuading representatives of the offending airlines even to sit around a table with MPs whose constituents are affected, let alone contemplate the slightest change to their night flight schedules.

It is too easily assumed that the national interest and that of the aviation industry are synonymous. This is not necessarily so. To take one obvious example, encouraging people who might otherwise holiday in this country to go on artificially cheap foreign holidays has obvious implications for our domestic tourist industry.

So far as London and the South East are concerned, I question whether the jobs created by the building of new airports and the expansion of existing ones are either beneficial or necessary. Given that much of the South East already enjoys full employment, the effect of creating more jobs is surely to continue fuelling an already overheated economy.

The main problems in the South East are a deteriorating quality of life caused by an overheated housing market, growing congestion, loss of habitats, increasing noise and other forms of pollution.

In what way will any of these be mitigated by building yet more airports or by expanding existing ones? As to the environmental impact of continuous expansion, this has been set out starkly by the government's own advisers. Sir Tom Blundell, chairman of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, recently said that if the growth of air travel were not curtailed, aircraft would have a "very significant" effect on global warming.

The Government's Sustainable Development Commission has drawn attention to what it described as a " fundamental contradiction" between the demands of the aviation industry and the Government's goal of sustainable development. What is the point of maintaining such bodies if we propose to take no notice of the advice they offer? Sooner or later the bullet is going to have to be bitten and, given that the outcome of the Government's present consultation will determine the direction of policy for the next 30 years, the moment has surely come.

Those who argue for indefinite expansion appear to take
for granted the notion that cheap air travel is a basic human right. I beg to differ. I believe that the undoubted benefits have to be balanced against the environmental impact to a far greater extent than is already the case. Despite ministerial assertions to the contrary, the philosophy that underlies the present consultation appears to be that of predict and provide. Predict and provide did not work for housing. It did not work for roads (although we now appear to be drifting back in that direction) and it will not work for aviation.

The White Paper very fairly sets out the consequences of unlimited expansion and they are horrendous. A new runway at Heathrow would cost another 260 homes (and a lot more would presumably be blighted) along with 228 hectares of green belt land, a church and a grade one listed building ( the Harmondsworth Tithe Barn).

At Stansted there are forecasts, if the industry gets the two new runways it would like, of passenger numbers increasing by 2030 from the present level of around 12 million a year to a mind-boggling 122 million. If that, or anything resembling it, were to come to pass, the impact on surrounding communities would be devastating.

A new airport at Cliffe, were it ever built, would cost 1,100 homes, 2,000 hectares of farmland, a grade one listed church and untold damage to local wild life habitats, some of which are of international importance. The damage Cliffe would do doesn't bear thinking about and, to be fair to ministers, the signs are they are not thinking about it. Cliffe is the nightmare scenario, included in the hope of making other less unpalatable options seem more attractive.

There are parts of the Government's strategy with which I agree. It makes perfect sense to encourage, within reasonable limits, the expansion of regional airports.

It makes sense to reduce the pressure on the South East by encouraging the growth of regional hub airports. The Government is also right to insist upon improved access by public transport to airports. This should continue to be a condition of expansion and any commitments entered into by the industry should be carefully monitored to make sure they are delivered.

For the rest, however, I favour a strategy of demand management. That will mean large increases in landing fees and other charges at the most congested airports. In the longer term it also means devising, along with our European partners, a workable tax on aviation fuel.

Any further concessions to the industry should be conditional on an end to night flights and, in any case, there should be no further significant expansion of airports in the South East.

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Date: 06/01/03 08:45:12 Source: Observer

SCRAP NEW RUNWAY PLANS, SAYS THINK-TANK

Government proposals to build more airport runways must be abandoned, says a leaked report from one of Britain's most authoratitive think-tanks, and the one most favoured by New Labour, reported The Observer (Business, p1). The Institute of Public Policy Research has slammed the government for being "in hock" to the airline industry and that existing capacity at airports should be utilised more efficiently before expansion is considered. The industry's contribution to climate change and its land-hungry development must be recognised. At present, airlines pay no tax on fuel or VAT on tickets.

The report's author, Simon Bishop, said: "The key point is the government must understand the climate change impact of future aviation growth...Other industries are already footing the bill. The avaiation industry is outside that. Other industries are effectively subsidising avaiation".

In the autumn the government will publish its air transport white paper which will shape the British airline industry for 30 years and be one of this year's key political issues. The government is deciding whether to build new runways at Heathrow, Stansted or Gatwick as more people are predicted to fly. But the IPPR says short-haul journeys in Britain should be discouraged in favour of lucrative long-haul travel, and if extra capacity is needed it should be earmarked for Manchester, Glasgow and Yorkshire to cure regional economic imbalances.

The final draft of the report, to be published in March, argues that "profits from retail shops and runway facilities should be separated as soon as possible and landing charges allowed to rise slowly to rates that cover full operating and infrastructure costs".

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