LADACAN mounted a High Court challenge against the lawfulness of Secretary of State’s decision in April 2025 to overturn the recommendation of National Planning Inspectors and permit massive further expansion of Luton Airport. The Judicial Review was heard on 4th/5th November 2025, but the Judge dismissed our grounds and the judgment handed down in December did not engage with many of the issues our lawyers had raised.
In line with our constitutional objective to oppose further expansion of Luton Airport, LADACAN instructed its legal team to file a request for permission to bring our concerns to the Court of Appeal. The paperwork was inadvertently submitted outside the new 1-week appeal deadline for Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects. The Court of Appeal listed a 2-day rolled-up hearing of the request for extension of time, the request for permission to appeal, and the grounds of appeal.
As our page here explains, when that hearing was held, it did not actually cover all of those matters, and so we are now faced with the additional burden of having to appeal against that process.
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. The Office for Budget Responsibility has warned that the costs of failing to achieve Net Zero will exceed those of achieving it.
The Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, in partnership with other university researchers, has published policy research indicating that the present cost of climate change damage to the UK is equivalent to about 1% of GDP, ie around £25bn per annum.
The government seems to think it’s OK to greenlight airport expansion 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.
PLEASE support us by making a donation using our crowdfunding page by clicking this link or by searching online for “Crowd Justice Luton Airport”.
By all means reduce the “Crowd Justice tip” to 0, and do please include your details if you are a UK tax-payer so Gift Aid can be claimed. Every donation helps fund this court action. Many thanks.
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