National Planning Inspectors carefully examined the application to almost double capacity at Luton Airport, and recommended against the project, saying its harms would outweigh its benefits.
The Secretary of State for Transport overruled their recommendation in April 2025 and granted permission for an additional 13 million passengers and 70,000 flights a year, with an increase in night flights of 70%.
LADACAN worked with local groups and environmental charities to raise the funds to challenge the lawfulness of that decision in the High Court. The first five grounds of our challenge were heard on 4th/5th November.
Aviation’s busiest year in 2019 saw a £30bn balance of trade deficit in tourism, with more money spent abroad than being brought in, according to the Office for National Statistics. So more cheap flights makes no sense.
The costs of damage caused by worsening climate change will rub out any benefits from the government’s Green Power Plan in 5 years according to the New Economics Foundation. And the Office for Budget Responsibility has warned that the costs of failing to achieve Net Zero will exceed those of achieving it.
The government seems to think it’s OK to expand airports because technology like SAF, carbon capture and airspace redesign will fix the climate cost. But right now SAF production is tiny, key carbon capture projects are delayed and UK airspace modernisation is way behind schedule and claims unproven benefits.
Being woken at night by aircraft noise increases the chance of stroke and heart disease according to the World Health Organisation, adding to the NHS burden.
The local transport infrastructure is insufficient to cope with the additional passenger load at Luton Airport according to the planning inspectors, and increased gridlock penalises other local businesses.
Noise blight and worsening transport congestion caused by an expanding Luton Airport would negatively affect economic prosperity in the wider area.
And the people of Luton deserve better than to have all the Town’s economic eggs put into the basket of an unsustainable, noisy and polluting industry. We need a more diversified, future-proof local economy.
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