No Airport Expansion!

Help campaigners with their proposed Statutory Appeal against Bristol Airport’s expansion plans.

This is very urgent; because of horribly tight legal deadlines we need to raise this money very quickly in order to instruct our legal team to issue the papers for a statutory appeal. Please help!

The background

After a huge local campaign involving 11,000 people making written comments (84% against the plans), Bristol Airport’s expansion plans were turned down by the local council’s planning committee in Feb 2020.

The airport appealed against this refusal and, after a three-month public inquiry, where the local MP’s, the West of England Combined Authority, the Metro Mayor, Bristol Council, Bath & North East Somerset Council and North Somerset Council all objected, the planning inspectors still gave the airport the go-ahead for their expansion plans.

This means there could be more than 20,000 extra flights, an additional two million passengers a year, an extra 10,000 car movements a day on local congested roads, many more night flights and a new multi-storey car park on greenbelt land. 

It also means that the twenty plus other regional airports with plans to expand can use this terrible decision as a precedent to get their own plans through.

The Inspector’s decision in the airport’s appeal

• On health; the inquiry heard numerous health professionals evidencing the mental and physical effects of noise and lack of sleep (plus pollution and other impacts). Despite this, the inspectors concluded that if the expansion went ahead: ‘There would be a overall helpful impact on population health’ (because of the increase in jobs).
• On climate change; the conclusion of the inspectors was that climate change ‘must be regarded as neutral in their decision’.
• On the traffic impact; the inspectors said that the extra 10,000 car journeys a day ‘would not give rise to any severe impacts on the road network’.
• On noise; the inspectors decided that the noise from the thousands of extra planes ‘is negligible and thus ‘not significant’.’
• On air quality; despite all parties (including the airport) agreeing that the expanded airport would breach the WHO 2021 Air Quality Guidelines, the inspectors stated: ‘There would be no unacceptable effects on air quality from the proposed development’.
• On jobs and economic growth; The New Economics Foundation submitted a detailed report in evidence showing that the airport’s figures for new jobs were greatly exaggerated. The inspectors chose to ignore this evidence and used, without reservation, the airport’s own figures for new jobs.
• On tourism; we heard expert evidence at the inquiry that there is only one tourist arriving at Bristol Airport for every six UK based tourists who fly to holidays abroad from the airport (and presumably spend their holiday money at their destination). Despite this, the inspectors conclude that ‘the effects of outbound tourism are unlikely to be significant.’

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As you can see from these extracts, the decision reads like it could have been written by the airport. On every single issue, despite apparently listening to the carefully argued independent evidence from our world leading experts (Professor Kevin Anderson, Sam Hunter-Jones and Finlay Asher) the inspectors decided against us.

WE CANNOT LEAVE THIS DECISION UNCHALLENGED…

We have taken legal advice from a QC who has worked on the case and she has told us that there are possible grounds for a Statutory Appeal to the High Court. This would be a legal challenge to a High Court Judge who would have the power to quash it.

We are the coordinating committee of a volunteer community group-Bristol Airport Action Network (BAAN) who have helped to galvanise resistance to these expansion plans. So far we have delayed the airport’s plans by three years, but this could be the last battle and we are determined to bring this legal challenge and stop them in their tracks. 

Will you help us to do this? Our QC has considerably reduced her rates but the nature of the legal process means that there are considerable amounts of money to be raised. WE ONLY HAVE ONE MONTH TO RAISE THE MONEY BECAUSE OF THE COURT TIMETABLE.

The UK still holds the COP26 Presidency and should be leading the way on this issue, not allowing thousands of more planes in the sky. The science is clear but the airport has totally ignored this and are recklessly pursuing their growth agenda at this time of climate and ecological crisis.

We desperately need your support; please contribute as much as you can and share this page with your networks now!

You can find more information on our BAAN web page at www.bristolairportactionnetwork.wordpress.com/

Thank you so much for reading.