High Court Judgement on 3rd Runway

High Court Judgement on 3rd Runway

You may have heard that today (Friday 25th March) we have won a major victory in the High Court against the 3rd runway.

The High Court has ruled that the Government’s decision to permit a 3rd runway is “untenable in law and common sense.” The judge also expressed his concern at the “hardship caused to the local community by uncertainty.”

The judge ruled that if any Government decides to press ahead with the 3rd runway it must review the climate change implications of Heathrow expansion, the economic case for a 3rd runway and the issue of how additional passengers would get to a bigger airport.

In effect, the court has basically agreed with our arguments that no sensible Government could go ahead with expanding Heathrow without taking into account its own policy on tackling climate change. It is also now abundantly clear that the economic benefits of a 3rd Runway were greatly exaggerated and the plans for getting passengers to and from the airport were ludicrously unworkable. When Geoff Hoon, the then Transport Minister, conceded to BAA lobbying for a 3rd Runway, the Government aviation policy was also already five years out of date and formed no justifiable basis to take this decision.

The position after this High Court judgement is that the Government can either scrap the 3rd Runway proposal or be forced to start the whole decision making process all over again and if it does its climate change policy and any fair reassessment of economic benefits and passenger figures would, in my view, inevitably result in no 3rd Runway. If any government tried to ignore these issues and press ahead it would open up a vista of legal challenges in the High Court and Europe.

In effect, today we have won a major battle in our campaign not just to prevent the current plans for a 3rd runway but to kill it off altogether. This is great news.

Rest assured I will continue to keep you informed as matters develop.

submitted by John on 26 Mar 2010 at 16:50