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The Government’s consultation on expanding Heathrow Airport will close this Wednesday, on the 27th February. The Government expects to make a decision later this year on proposals including:

* A new third runway - creating a new flightpath across west London and bringing noisier aircraft across parts of south London.

* New mixed mode operations - where each existing runway is used concurrently for both arrivals and departures.

* Restricting relief from runway alternation during the day – planes currently switch runways at 3pm every day.

* Ending the Cranford agreement which restricts take offs to the east from the northern runway.

* A planning application to lift the 480,000 annual movements limit set as a condition of Terminal Five – this could now go as high as 720,000.

* A new Terminal Six to support the third runway

*A review of westerly preference – where planes normally descend from the east.

Have your say If you want to oppose this expansion, use the template under Information and please email DfT:
heathrowconsultation@dft.gsi.gov.uk

Mail sent before midnight on Wednesday 27th February will be considered as part of the consultation.

The new runway will require the demolition of hundreds of homes, including the entire village of Sipson, potentially displacing thousands of people whose home will be left within metres of the new airport boundary. No concrete plans have been set out for where these communities will be re-housed. It will bring more noise disturbance for thousands of people who already suffer from aircraft noise, and put approximately 2 million people under flightpaths (the government effectively hushed up its own noise study, ANASE, which showed how badly people are affected by aircraft noise, in order to claim noise impacts will not increase). Worryingly, for a government trying to decrease carbon emissions, this expansion will massively increase CO2 emissions by 9.8 million tones, the same amount as Kenya currently emits per year. The impact of a new runway won’t just be more noise and air pollution. With an estimated 53.4 million more road users going to the airport by 2030, the impact on road congestion in local areas is likely to be catastrophic, with local residents facing gridlock on already crowded streets.

Claims that airport growth is essential to maintain London’s economy and status as a ‘World Class City’ have been rubbished by economic consultants CE Delft, in a report showing that calculations on demand and economic viability did not factor in the tax breaks of approximately £9 billion p/a that aviation receives through not paying fuel duty and VAT. The government has also used statistics including the price of oil falling from approximately $100 per barrel today (according to OPEC) to under $53 per barrel by 2030. A recent survey (2006) from the London Chamber of Commerce revealed that 78% of firms were against expansion at Heathrow and less than a sixth of firms would even consider leaving London if the airport did not expand.

AirportWatch do not deny that flying is important and should not be given up in its entirety, but believes that aviation’s economic case has been massively overstated- often to the detriment of its negative social and environmental impacts. We also believe that the Heathrow consultation has been poorly carried out (leaving out many residents who will be adversely affected by the expansion). However, there is still time to make your feelings known.

Details of the government consultation on Heathrow can be found here:

http://www.dft.gov.uk/consultations/open/heathrowconsultation/

Please bear in mind that the full consultation document is over 230 pages long and has been dismissed by the campaign for Plain English as “atrocious”, and designed so that “…no ordinary person with an interest in the plans to expand Heathrow could be expected to read and understand it.”

For a breakdown of what the consultation says, and noise maps showing which areas are likely to be affected by the plans, you can visit: http://www.2mgroup.org.uk/ a coalition of local councils representing the 2 million people affected by Heathrow expansion.

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