About 50 local residents and campaigners who have doggedly opposed Bristol Airport’s expansion over the past four years demonstrated at the A38 roundabout at the entrance of the airport on Wednesday 21st June 2023. The key message to the Airport’s management and Canadian owners is ‘Bristol Airport: We are watching you!’.
Last month the UK Court of Appeal turned down the submission by Bristol Airport Action Network (BAAN) that further challenged the decision to expand Bristol Airport from 10 million passengers per year to 12 million. It was in effect the end of the legal battle that has been raging over the past four years. Along with permission to expand, the public inquiry also agreed a range of conditions that the airport has to abide with. This peaceful and non-disruptive action demonstrated that the local community is determined to hold the airport to account especially on the promises and conditions that were agreed as part of the expansion decision.
The campaign groups and local authorities that opposed the expansion plans feel there is a real need to be vigilant especially as the airport has written confirmation of ambitions to further increase passenger numbers to 15 million per year in the 2030’s and to 20 million by the 2040’s. The detrimental effects of current expansion plans on the local community and environment were well documented during the 10-week long Planning Inquiry in terms of more air and noise pollution, additional night flights, an increase in traffic congestion, illegal parking in the surrounding villages and loss of greenbelt land. Naturally, local residents are extremely concerned of the impact on their lives of an extra two million passengers using the airport so it is easy to imagine that the proposed doubling in size of the airport is going to make life totally intolerable.
There is also a lack of trust regarding the promises made by the airport which has been heightened by the case of Leeds Bradford Airport (LBA) that was found to breach planning rules last summer by operating 747 more night-time flights than allowed. It was the monitoring by local campaign groups that exposed this breach of 25% extra night flights by the airport.
Many people in the local community are exasperated and frustrated following the ruling by the UK Court of Appeal that turned down our submission that challenged the legality of the decision by the Planning Inquiry of 2021. We still feel the decision is vastly short-sighted and ill-conceived on many levels. The strength of opposition to the growth of the airport and the worries of increased greenhouse gas emissions were completely ignored by the Planning Inspectors and the courts. Local democracy has been trashed and the impact on the environment was deemed to be inconsequential. This is putting profit and greed before people and planet.
The courts know that the planning laws pertaining to aviation are out-dated and do not take into account the carbon and non-carbon emissions that airport expansion will produce. They also know this at a time when humanity is facing a climate emergency and should be doing everything possible to reduce our emissions. The effects of the climate emergency can be seen on a regular basis with reports of devastating floods, record ice melts, destructive wildfires, crop failures and loss of the web of life that humanity depends on. It is also immoral that the Canadian owners, Ontario Teachers Pension Plan, (OTPP) are forcing this expansion on our local area when they are seeing a record number of ferocious forest wildfires cover the eastern coast of North America with thick smog resulting in life threatening and illegal air quality.
