LADACAN has initiated a legal challenge of the lawfulness of Secretary of State Heidi Alexander’s decision to grant permission for massive further expansion at Luton Airport.
We’ve set up a crowdfunding page to help us meet the legal costs of a Judicial Review process.
Please visit Judicial Review of Luton Airport Expansion Decision and give generously.
We have consistently fought plans for further expansion of Luton Airport, on behalf of our members who want to preserve quality of life in south Bedfordshire, north Hertfordshire, the Aylesbury Vale and the Chilterns Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Local people want to sleep at night, to peaceably enjoy their gardens and parks, to breathe fresh air, to see blue sky, and to use the roads and railways without overcrowding.
Luton Rising, the owner of Luton Airport on behalf of Luton Borough Council, quite improperly incentivised the Airport to grow at an accelerated rate between 2014 and 2019, regardless of the noise controls set by the Council. It then used the revenue from that accelerated growth as a platform to launch a premature bid to almost double the capacity, with plans to destroy a County Wildlife site at Wigmore Valley Park to build a second terminal and add more than 70,000 flights a year. Local people have overwhelmingly said NO!
NO to more Noise
Government aviation policy stresses the need for balance between growth and mitigation, and that aviation noise should reduce as capacity increases. Luton Rising wants to increase noise even further, despite having caused existing noise limits to be breached in 2017-2019 thanks to its irresponsibly accelerated growth.
The graph below shows how numbers of aircraft departures all through the day would increase from 2019 levels towards the black line of 2043, starting between 5 and 6 in the morning.
Below we see their plan for arrivals, which roar in low over Pitstone, Whipsnade, Kensworth, Caddington and South Luton; or over Stevenage, St Paul’s Walden and Breachwood Green towards Wigmore, all depending on the wind direction. There would be an arriving aircraft every 3 minutes between 10pm and 11pm, then every 10 minutes until 2am. Aircraft noise at night is known to damage health, causing high blood pressure, strokes and of course tiredness. As well as harming people, it adds to NHS costs.
The increase in air noise during the night-time period is due to an increase in commercial flights (freight and general aviation movements are unchanged) of approximately of 76%. The total increase in aircraft movements during the night-time period is forecast to be approximately 70%.
Luton Rising (Development Consent Order Application, Noise Chapter 16)
NO to the destruction of Wigmore Park
Wigmore Park was given to the residents of Wigmore as a buffer between the Airport and their homes. But Luton Borough Council has now turned the Park over to Luton Rising, which plans to destroy it. The red outline below shows the expanded airfield footprint, with the Park sacrificed for more aircraft stands and car-parks, and a second terminal:
Further expansion of Luton Airport flies in the face of Climate Change and the need to achieve net zero by 2050. The Climate Change Committee has called for a halt in airport expansion and for government to create an overall aviation carbon budget rather than allowing piecemeal increases. Its own Jet Zero Strategy is little more than a set of hopes and aspirations – akin to fiddling while the planet literally burns.
NO to a more vulnerable local economy
Luton Borough Council’s COVID support from government stipulated that the Council should reduce Luton’s financial dependency on the Airport. Loss of Airport revenue almost bankrupted the Town due to bankrupt thinking. The local economy needs to be diversified rather than become even more dependent on the Airport. Yet Luton Rising has run up a debt of half a billion pounds on projects to facilitate further airport expansion, as a result leaving itself having to make huge interest payments rather than using that money to reduce poverty in Luton.
NO to the environmental damage
A massive increase in annual passenger traffic, from 18 to 32 million, counts as a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project. This is right on the doorstep of north Hertfordshire with its essential farmland and rural towns and villages – over which Luton’s planes fly day and night, as well as robbing local residents of sleep. The environmental damage would be huge:
- 70,000 more flights a year creating noise, carbon emissions, NOx pollutants and high-altitude contrails
- 40,000 extra passenger journeys a day creating more carbon emissions and air pollution
- increasing local exposure to kerosene fumes and health-damaging ultrafine particulates
- destroying the ecology and habitat of Wigmore Valley Park and using local arable land to create a substitute
Local community groups all around the area, and the Parish, Town and County councils in Hertfordshire, are united in their opposition to further expansion at Luton Airport. 90% of the initial responses to the planning examination opposed further expansion. LADACAN submitted robust rebuttals to the consultations and is continuing to fight against this project as being out of keeping with the surrounding area.
LADACAN has initiated a legal challenge of the lawfulness of Secretary of State Heidi Alexander’s decision to grant permission for massive further expansion at Luton Airport.
We’ve set up a crowdfunding page to help us meet the legal costs of a Judicial Review process.
Please visit Judicial Review of Luton Airport Expansion Decision and give generously.
Do follow us on social media using the handle @GoLadacan
Click the link below to go to the next page to find out more about the process and what you can do.