H&F Among Councils Back In Court over Heathrow
Challenging airport expansion by outlining vital flaws in the Government’s decision
H&F Council Leader, Cllr Stephen Cowan, left, with other council leaders outside court
H&F Council is among local authorities who have begun an appeal against the High Court decision in May to throw out an initial legal challenge against plans to expand Heathrow with a third runway.
Proceedings began at the High Court today, 17 October and run until 24 October. H&F is joined in the action by the Mayor of London, Greenpeace and four other affected local authorities, who say they are committed to protecting their residents from the damaging effects of Heathrow expansion.
At the Court of Appeal they aim to outline vital flaws in the Government’s decision to give the go ahead to a third runway at the West London airport.
The councils – Wandsworth, Richmond upon Thames, Hillingdon, Hammersmith & Fulham and Windsor and Maidenhead – will say that that the Government failed to properly consider the full impact of expansion on noise, health and the environment and that the Airports National Policy Statement should therefore be quashed.
Lawyers for the group will spell out how the Government’s deliberate failure to identify the whole area that could be affected by noise from a hugely expanded Heathrow fatally undermined the decision to go ahead.
Ministers consulted on a single set of speculative flightpaths. The councils say that if it was not possible to identify actual flightpaths – as the Government and the airport claimed– they should have identified all the areas where flightpaths might be located. Papers disclosed in the case show the Government was worried that if it did reveal the true extent of the risk then support for Heathrow expansion would be lost.
The Government also failed to apply its own policy on noise limits. In June 2018 it had decided that the threshold should be 51 units of noise measurement. But in deciding if Heathrow should go ahead it applied a higher threshold of 54.
This change had the effect of dramatically reducing the numbers assessed to be disturbed by noise – thus again concealing the size of the population likely to be affected and minimising the number of people alerted to the threat of intolerable noise.
The councils will say that the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) which is the process by which detailed environmental considerations are built into plans was also defective in failing to consider how the Airports National Policy Statement (ANPS) backing expansion at Heathrow related to all relevant local plans - including the Hillingdon Local Plan and the Mayor’s London Carbon Plan.
They will also argue that the Secretary of State was wrong to reject Gatwick as an alternative to Heathrow on the grounds that expansion at this location might threaten a species of orchid.
Cllr Stephen Cowan, Leader of Hammersmith & Fulham Council, pictured above with other council leaders, said: ""The Government has chosen to deliberately ignore the huge environmental damage Heathrow’s proposed third runway will cause.
"Meanwhile, its own figures demonstrate Britain will gain a negligible return on the £18billion of taxpayers’ money the government is proposing to throw at this scheme. There’s plenty of greener, better initiatives that such huge sums could be spent on which would produce the economic growth our country needs."
Cllr Ravi Govindia, Leader of neighbouring Wandsworth Council said: "The third runway will have devastating consequences for the health of Londoners. It is also becoming clearer by the day that expansion will play havoc with the Government’s zero carbon targets.
"The latest advice to the Government from the Climate Change Committee, which includes reduced assumptions on aviation growth, makes it clear that current planned additional capacity in London, including the third runway, is likely to leave at most very limited room for growth at regional airports.
"Heathrow’s insatiable desire for growth is bad news for airports everywhere else in the country – and bad news for people wanting to fly from their local airport. The Government should be ordered to tear up its ANPS and start again taking account of what we now know about climate change impacts and the effects of tougher zero carbon targets on the rest of the UK."
The Court of Appeal will begin hearing the appeals from the councils and other groups on 17 October. The hearings are expected to conclude on 23 October.
October 17, 2019