Aircraft noise will get louder for longer if Heathrow’s expansion plans go through, a meeting organised by Putney’s MP heard last night, with the current nine-hour daily break, or respite, roughly halved.
Around 50 residents packed a hot, airless room in Felsham Road to put questions to Fleur Anderson, an anti-expansion campaigner, and a representative of the Putney Society, ten days before the first deadline to have their say on the government’s plans.
The government wants to build a third runway at Heathrow and has published a draft planning blueprint, the Heathrow Expansion National Policy Statement, that sets the rules any future application would be judged against. Residents have until 1 September to respond to the public consultation, and a committee of MPs is taking written evidence until 23 July: two deadlines, ten days apart.
What Putney stands to lose
That daily break is the sharpest point for Putney. At the moment the two runways take turns, switching at 3pm each day, so that people under the flight path get a predictable break of around nine hours from planes directly overhead. Wandsworth Council, which opposes expansion, says a third runway would bring the “loss of runway alternation” and leave residents with “no respite after 3pm”, because a shorter new runway would force larger, noisier aircraft onto the existing two. Stephen Luxford of the Putney Society, whose colleague Mike Fawcett dug the detail out of the documents, put it plainly: “In effect we’re going to lose half our respite period,” an extra four or five hours a day of planes overhead.
The government’s answer is that noise will be no worse than it is today. But that claim compares an expanded Heathrow in 2055 with 2024, and assumes planes keep getting quieter. Measured against the alternative of not building at all, the government’s own appraisal tells a different story: at the lower noise threshold its latest evidence points to, expansion would leave roughly 900,000 more people exposed to harmful levels of aircraft noise than if nothing were built. The same document accepts that the real picture depends on flight paths that have not yet been drawn and will not be settled until around 2028. It was on Clean Air Day that the plan first conceded quieter hours will shrink. Heathrow, for its part, says expansion will still “provide predictable respite for communities”.
Paul Beckford, policy director of the No 3rd Runway Coalition, told the room the case for the whole project had fallen apart. On the government’s own figures, he said, the scheme costs the economy money rather than making it, and the growth it promises is a fraction of what the Chancellor claimed when it was revived 18 months ago. There was no national plan for aviation, he argued, only a Heathrow one, and expansion would pull jobs and flights away from regional airports towards the south east. On the missing detail he was blunt: it was “scandalous”, he said, to propose building a runway “without telling people where the planes are going”.
Luxford’s verdict on the plan was shorter. The draft, he said, “is feeble and unacceptable to the people of Putney”.
The gaps between what the government is proposing and what the campaigners want run across the whole plan.
| Issue | What the government proposes | What Putney’s campaigners want |
|---|---|---|
| Daily noise respite | A third runway, with overall noise said to be no worse than in 2024. | Keep the current nine-hour daily break, guaranteed. Campaigners say expansion roughly halves it. |
| Night flights | A 6.5-hour overnight ban, and only once a third runway opens. | A seven-hour ban brought in soon, rising to eight, and an end to the up to 16 landings between 4.30am and 6am. |
| Flight paths | Based on indicative 2015 routes. The real paths are decided later, around 2028. | No approval until residents know where the planes will actually fly. |
| Air quality | Expansion will not breach legal pollution limits. | The limits are too weak. They warn of 55% more nitrogen oxides and 60% more fine particles. |
| The economic case | Up to £42bn in benefits and more than 60,000 jobs. | Point to the government’s own appraisal, which shows a net £62bn cost and 0.05% growth. |
The Society’s transport panel also wants steeper landing approaches, which it says would keep planes around 1,500 feet higher over Putney, and noise judged by the loudest moments rather than a daily average. On the overnight ban, the government’s own noise study accepts it would change little in practice, because most of the flights it covers would simply shift to just after 6am.
Air pollution and health ran through the evening too, with the coalition warning of a sharp rise in pollution from the extra flights. Heathrow has already started offering funded mental-health support to residents whose homes sit inside the demolition zone, before any permission to build has been granted. The airport says that service is a response to “years of uncertainty” and part of being “a better neighbour”. It echoes an earlier stage, when the full noise burden was kept from MPs before they voted.
Fleur Anderson, the Putney MP hosting the meeting, left no doubt where she stood. “We should not, as a community, be asked to take any more at all,” she said, adding that she could not see how expansion squared with the country’s climate commitments. “It just doesn’t work for me at all.” One resident summed up the daily reality: “It’s just relentless.”
Whether the runway is ever built is genuinely uncertain. The project has been driven hard by the Treasury, and campaigners hope a change of prime minister could reset it, with the frontrunner, Andy Burnham, having previously opposed expansion on the grounds it would pull investment towards London. That is far from settled, and even if this version is beaten back, more consultations lie ahead.
How to have your say
Both speakers and the MP agreed on the single most useful thing residents can do: respond to the consultation, and get other people to respond too. “Numbers, honestly,” Anderson said when asked what would help most.
You have until 11.59pm on 1 September. You can respond online, by email to henpsconsultation@dft.gov.uk, or by post to the Airports National Policy Statement Review Team, Great Minster House, 33 Horseferry Road, London SW1P 4DR.
The survey is sufficiently complex that Anderson’s team has developed – and is improving – a guide for Putney residents.
You do not have to answer every question. Anderson suggests focusing on the need for expansion, noise, night flights and surface access. Written evidence to the Transport Committee closes at noon on 23 July.
