Birmingham Airport anti-Noise Group

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Monday 19th January 2004

Photo Opportunity: Wednesday 21st January, 8pm. Local residents and campaigners gather for a public meeting at Tile Cross Residents Club, Blackmoor Croft, off St. Giles Road, Tile Cross.

Public meeting: airport fight must go on
Shorter runway plans a "Trojan Horse"

Birmingham Airport anti Noise Group (BANG) will hold a public meeting at Tile Cross Residents Club on Wednesday 21st January 2004 to discuss the Government's Aviation White Paper and the threat posed to the area by expansion at Birmingham International Airport. If these plans are not stopped, by 2030 BIA will be the size of Heathrow Airport today.

The Department for Transport (DfT) published the Aviation White Paper [1] on 16th December 2003. In the document, Transport Secretary Alistair Darling gave the green light to a second runway and an extension of the existing runway at BIA. Residents fear that the plans, if pushed through, will mean more unbearable disturbance from aircraft noise, and uncertainty and blight in the meantime.

Secretary of BANG James Botham said:

"We need this meeting because there's a real danger of Birmingham becoming the forgotten casualty of the air industry's insatiable demands for growth and the Government's failure to stand up to those demands. The White Paper acknowledges the problem of rising aircraft noise and air pollution faced by airport communities but it fails to grant those communities or their local authorities the powers they need to manage local airport impacts [2]. Nor is Alistair Darling showing signs that he has got to grips with the flawed economics that lie behind current forecasts of growth in air travel. The Government is only addressing the symptoms and not the causes."

The Airport have promised a shorter second runway, 'the Birmingham Alternative', [3] which the Government favours, but BANG believes the plans are a 'Trojan Horse', an apparent compromise which in reality would lay the foundations for even more growth.

Mr Botham continued:

"The Aviation White Paper backs BIA's proposals for a shorter second runway on the grounds of reduced impact, but what's to stop the Airport extending the second runway at some point in the future? It's the same dilemma we faced during the Consultation,[4] we risk being lulled into accepting what seems like the least damaging option. It might appeal to the campaign-weary pragmatists among us but in the long run we will be worse off."

The meeting will hear from Bickenhill Councillor Jim Ryan, Shard End Councillor Ian Ward, Chris Crean of West Midlands Friends of the Earth, and Hertta Hussein, a Castle Bromwich resident and campaigner with BANG.

Editor's Notes

[1] Hard copies of the White Paper (priced £25) and/or a free summary document can be ordered by telephoning 0845 100 5554. The document can also be viewed on-line at www.dft.gov.uk/aviation/whitepaper/

[2] In the White Paper, the Government concedes that, as we had maintained all along, "simply building more and more capacity to meet potential demand would have major, and unacceptable, environmental impacts". And yet the White Paper recommends a vast program of airport expansion across the UK.

The Paper sets no upper limit on how much additional air travel the Government wants to promote. The economic benefits of air transport are assumed to be so obvious and overwhelming that the impact on local communities can be regarded as an acceptable price to pay, wherever 'mitigation' measures are deemed 'impractical'. The Paper states that the Government's 'basic aim is to limit and, where possible, reduce the number of people in the UK significantly affected by aircraft noise' but that it prefers to see noise control 'mostly delivered locally'. But local authorities have no powers to regulate noise under the Environmental Protection Act. The Government, on the other hand, could regulate noise at all airports if it chose to but it has only ever designated Heathrow, Gatwick and Stanstead for this purpose.

On the brighter side, plans for a new airport between Coventry and Rugby have been scrapped, hopefully for good. BANG congratulates the Warwickshire campaigners and we hope they will now join us in our ongoing campaign to halt expansion at Birmingham.

[3] The White Paper gives a ringing endorsement of 'The Birmingham Alternative', the Airport Company's "environmentally friendly" vision of a second runway. The Paper says 'of the options proposed, there was strongest support for the 'Birmingham Alternative' proposal'. This is odd, since the Alternative was never one of the four options listed in the formal consultation documents!

Published in October 2002, the Alternative proposed a 2,000m long (shorter by 600m) second runway, requiring 290 hectares of land, sparing 109 properties and avoiding the loss of Bickenhill Meadow Site of Special Scientific Interest and Bickenhill Conservation Area. Only smaller and quieter types of aircraft would use the new short runway and it would not operate at night. However, it would still expose 81,000 people to aircraft noise levels of 57dBA, the Government's lower limit of noise disturbance, by 2020. Even BIA's figures, which take account of 'long term expectation of noise improvement', state that 103,000 people would be affected.

Extending the existing runway would allow larger and more fully laden aircraft to fly longer distances non-stop, creating additional noise disturbance for people under the present flight path. In addition, if BIA increases the number of off-peak movements from its existing runway to the same levels as during the peak times this will put up air traffic volume still further.

[4] The White Paper is the outcome of the DfT's 'Consultation on the Future of Air Transport', published in July/August 2002 and February 2003. In total, around 500,000 responses were received by the end of June 2003, including completed questionnaires. Reports are available on the DfT web-site www.dft.gov.uk/aviation/whitepaper/responses/index.htm