In 2012, Luton Airport’s operator said steady growth to 18 million passengers would be balanced with steadily reducing noise. However its owners Luton Borough Council and Luton Rising financially incentivised accelerated growth with the result that flights increased before less noisy aircraft had been introduced, breaking noise limits for three years in a row. The Airport reached its 18 million limit 9 years too soon in 2019, creating windfall profits at the expense of local communities.
Luton Rising, the greedy airport owner, now wants a further near-doubling to 32 million passengers. People across this whole rural area are fighting back to avoid noise blight and clogged road and rail. LADACAN is joining other groups and local councils to fight this threat to our quality of life.
The Development Consent Order process
Luton Rising has to obtain a Development Consent Order (DCO) for its airport expansion plan because of the huge environmental impacts it would have. The DCO process is explained in a video from the government planning website which is embedded below:
A Preliminary Meeting was held on 10th August where the panel of Inspectors agreed to requests to include project finance and governance among the list of topics to be examined.
The six-month Examination stage has now begun, during which detailed Written Representations provided by the Interested Parties including LADACAN will be taken into account and further questions raised on Luton Rising. There will be three Issue-Specific Hearings in September. The next video explains these in more detail:
Following the Examination process, the Panel has three months to make a written recommendation to the Secretary of State who must make a decision within three months. Then there is six weeks for any legal challenge to be raised.
Finding out more
All the application documents and procedural letters from the Examining Authority (the Panel of five Inspectors) are on the National Infrastructure Planning website at this link >> Infrastructure Planning: Luton Airport
You can then select the Documents tab and click on the blue “View Documents (beta version)” button. Select the “Developer’s Application” section and use the Filter to choose a document based on its subject or name. This screenshot has orange arrows to show the relevant controls:
Let us know if you see oversights or omissions which are relevant to the planning process and which the Inspectors ought to be made aware of. The more evidence we can produce to highlight deficiencies in the application, the better. Ultimately the Inspectors have to balance the harms against the claimed benefits of the application.
Alert your friends and neighbours to the threat
This plan would have massive impacts on the local environment all around the airport. Please alert your friends and neighbours: quality of life in this area would change forever if the plan goes ahead. A much larger Luton Airport, flying over the towns and villages of Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire, adding carbon emissions at a time of Climate Crisis, choking local roads and exporting more money overseas on cheap flights is not sustainable. Instead, Luton Borough Council – which ultimately owns the Airport – should heed its own Climate Emergency declaration and plan for a better airport and not a bigger one.
To join LADACAN, please visit our About Us page.
Do tell people about the LADACAN website and suggest they follow @GoLadacan on social media.
Click the left-hand link below to go to the next page.
This expansion is planned solely to make money for Luton Borough Council. It is not needed and will have a bad effect on the surrounding villages and on the environment.
If you go to an event, do have an open mind and make sure that you get to talk to those people who can discuss your areas of interest and concern. This is not as straightforward as it should be, as data is literally laid out in large piles on tables and there is no list of the experts present and their responsibilities. Members of the Luton Rising management team will be thin on the ground and most of the experts are contractors. You will have to ask “helpers” to point out relevant people
Some suggested areas to probe:
1. Ask why significant earthmoving takes place in phase 1, in 2025, see timetable below, when not needed until phase 2a, which is not due to start until 2033, and doesn’t appear to be particularly green
2. Understand the assumptions for control of “Green Controlled Growth”
3. And how will the proposed Environmental Scrutiny Group have appropriate powers to measure performance, police it, and be properly funded and resourced to undertake its “key” role
4. Challenge the assumptions selected for key metrics such as air travel growth, quieter planes, green fuel etc, etc bearing in mind the significant impacts of Brexit, Covid, binding carbon reduction and the inherent errors of forecasting out for over 20 years
5. Challenge the modelling of theoretical data to produce forecasts of averaged daily noise contours which do not reflect the impact of real noise levels, particularly during peak periods and ask about the current absence of fixed noise monitors in those residential areas which suffer the most from take offs and landings.
6. Ask why does the airport continue with night flights, especially noisy freighters
7. Ask why the target for public transport access to the airport is set at 40%, Heathrow is targeting 50%
Had the misfortune of attending the latest Luton Borough Council carbon-fetish roadshow in Slip End on Saturday. Benefits boards front and centre, environmental drawbacks pushed into a side area. Neat trick that. Given the Council’s headlong rush to ruin the local area for all I’m only surprised they did not suggest a coal fired power station to run the airport, with transport links provided by steam locomotives! All-in-all these are terrible plans for airport expansion which must be strongly opposed. My objections will in going in ASAP.
At face value, the proposed 80% increase in passenger capacity means:
80% more flights
80% more noise
80% more pollution
80% more congestion in road and rail travel to the airport.
The pre-Covid situation on flight frequency and their timing in unsociable hours, noise and pollution was already the subject of local objections over a wide area. Hence arguments claiming major amelioration or reduction in the above impact will not be credible or acceptable unless they result in lower levels of disturbance than in 2018-2019.
I strongly object to this enormous expansion of Luton airport activity.