Ian Taylor says approval provides insight on approach to future planning decisions
The government approved plans to expand London City airport last week, increasing its capacity from 6.5 million passengers a year to nine million by 2031.
But while allowing the airport an additional three flights in the first half hour of each weekday – a 50% increase – the government refused to extend London City’s operations through Saturday afternoon from 12.30 to 18.30.
The joint decision by deputy prime minister Angela Rayner, who is secretary of state for housing, communities and local government, and transport secretary Louise Haigh overturned the decision of the Labour-run London Borough of Newham which refused permission for expansion.
It also ignored Labour Mayor of London Sadiq Khan’s policy to make London carbon neutral by 2030 noting this lacked “statutory weight” and aviation emissions “are controlled under national control regimes”.
Rayner and Haigh accepted the recommendations of inspectors who oversaw a recent public inquiry into the airport’s appeal against Newham’s ‘no’ to planning permission.
Their decision trod a fine line between signalling the government’s support for infrastructure development and pledge to fast-track planning decisions to “boost growth”, and its promise to act in line with “strict environmental standards”.
It gave a clue as to how Labour will approach more substantial airport planning decisions – crucially, Heathrow’s reworked plan for a third runway, which has been on hold since the pandemic despite a favourable Supreme Court ruling in December 2020, and Gatwick’s plan to bring its emergency runway into regular use.
On the one hand, the secretaries of state gave “significant weight to the harm” of removing the Saturday afternoon curfew at London City which would have led to “80 aircraft movements on a typical summer Saturday afternoon”.
On the other, they accepted the airport’s growth forecasts, stating: “Long-term growth in demand is likely to recover and continue to grow.”
They ignored advice from public policy think tank the New Economics Foundation (NEF) which described the airport’s plan as “abysmal [and] directly contradicting advice from the government’s own Climate Change Committee”.
NEF senior economist Alex Chapman, an expert witness at the planning inquiry, labelled London City “the favoured airport of frequent and ultra-frequent flyers” and noted a NEF analysis in 2019 found a third of its passengers (33%) flew on routes served by direct train from London and another 31% to destinations reachable with a single change of train.
He argued: “Most seats added through airport expansions are taken by higher-income frequent flyers [and] we’ve already got capacity for some 300 million passenger movements every year.”
The government’s decision may be challenged by a High Court application for a statutory review, which must be made by the end of September. This seems highly likely.