Heathrow opens its consultation on a third runway tomorrow, giving Putney until 22 December to have its say on a plan that could halve its daily break from planes. This one is Heathrow’s own, on its plans for the airport, not a rerun of the government’s consultation in the summer.
Putney’s Labour MP, Fleur Anderson, led a debate on the runway in Westminster Hall last week, telling the government its economic case had collapsed. Two weeks tomorrow, on 10 November, she will share a platform with Wandsworth’s Conservative council leader, Robert Morritt, at a public meeting on Heathrow.
The summer consultation, which drew more than 27,000 responses, was the government’s, on the rulebook: the tests on noise, air quality, carbon and the economy that any third runway must pass. Anyone who used our response builder then was answering the government.
This time Heathrow is asking about the thing those rules would judge: its own proposals for an expanded airport, published online tomorrow. It says the answers will help it shape and refine them before it applies for planning permission.
The government’s draft rules say Heathrow’s plans for rotating the runways, the system behind Putney’s daily break from planes, must be submitted with that application. Anyone who answered in the summer needs to answer again to be heard on Heathrow’s plans.
Anderson told MPs the order was “the wrong way round”: Heathrow is consulting “before the Government have completed the policy framework that would govern it”.
In 2015, she said, the Airports Commission put the boost to the economy at £20 billion to £23 billion. On the Department for Transport’s latest figures, it has “fallen from £20 billion to perhaps little more than £1 billion”.
The Putney Society told MPs on the Transport Committee this month that a third runway would cut north Putney’s daily break from planes from nine hours to about four and a half.
Heathrow’s landing planes switch runways at 3pm each day, giving people under each approach around nine hours without planes overhead. The approach to the southern runway crosses north Putney.
Flight paths have not been drawn. The Society suspects the plan may be to keep the nine hours by adding approach routes, which could bring planes over Putney Vale and Roehampton.
At night, the government’s draft rules require a six-and-a-half-hour ban on scheduled flights, between 11pm and 7am. Morritt and six other council leaders told the government in August that this broadly mirrors what happens now. Anderson wants “a full seven-hour night-flight ban between 11 pm and 6 am”, and eight in future.
Replying for the government, transport minister Simon Lightwood said he could not say what ministers would decide while they were still going through the responses. Whatever they decide will go to a vote in the Commons before it takes effect.
He put the benefits to passengers and the economy at £39 billion to £52 billion over time, through lower fares, more flights and fewer delays. Noise and air quality, he added, “are particularly important to many local residents”.
For the Conservatives, Richard Holden urged the Prime Minister, in the Leader of the Opposition’s words, to “stop faffing about” and “get this runway built”.
He recalled that in 1970 Putney’s MP, Hugh Jenkins, asked for an undertaking “that no further enlargement of Heathrow Airport will be permitted and that no additional runways of any kind will be allowed”.
Closing the debate, Anderson urged Londoners to respond to Heathrow: “Although we do not yet know where the flightpaths will be, we know that far more people across London will be affected, so everyone who lives in London should respond to the consultation.”
How to have your say
Read the plans and respond online at heathrow.com/expansion from tomorrow, Tuesday 27 October.
Heathrow’s public events are drop-in, with no booking, and anyone can go to any of them. Dates and venues are on its consultation events page. Six online webinars need registration, and recordings go online afterwards.
You can also email expansionconsultation@heathrow.com, call free on 0800 307 7996, or write, with no stamp, to FREEPOST EXPANSION CONSULTATION. Heathrow says printed copies will be at inspection points around the local area.
The public meeting with Anderson and Morritt is on Tuesday 10 November, Morritt’s first public meeting as council leader. The venue and time have not yet been published. Anderson is at fleur.anderson.mp@parliament.uk and Morritt at Cllr.R.Morritt@wandsworth.gov.uk.
Responses to Heathrow close on Tuesday 22 December.
