Birmingham Airport anti-Noise Group

Newsletter Issue #9 - November 2006 Contact us

Towards a Genuinely 'Balanced Approach' to Airport Development

Birmingham International Airport Ltd. (BIA) published its new draft Master Plan, 'Towards 2030: Planning a Sustainable Future for Air Transport in the Midlands', on 31st October 2005.

Taking its cue from the Government's 2003 White Paper, 'The Future of Air Transport', the draft Master Plan identifies a 'balanced approach', defined as 'development and operation in such a way as to encourage economic growth and social inclusion, whilst minimising the environmental impact of the Airport and its operations' (para.6.1.2), as the key to 'sustainable development'.

For BIA, a 'balanced approach' means seeking to 'reduce the impacts of the Airport on those that live nearby, and on the natural environment' (para.4.8), in line with the company's policy of 'continuous environmental improvement' (para.10.1). However, as is abundantly clear from the draft Master Plan, the current approach is unable to deliver continuous environmental improvement, as the proposed programme of expansion is forecast to increase the airport's major environmental impacts over the 'plan period' to 2030 (see 'Growing Pains', right).

BANG favours a 'strategic' approach to airport development that seeks to make 'best use' of existing infrastructure, but we strongly dispute the assertion that the 'Government has promoted a sustainable approach to airport development in the White Paper though its proposals for a 'balanced approach'' (para.6.1.1). What it has in fact promoted is a simple trade-off, local people's environment and quality of life sacrificed in the pursuit of maximum economic gain, the very antithesis of 'sustainable development'.

BANG's formal submission to the draft Master Plan public consultation outlines an alternative, genuinely 'balanced approach' to airport development. Our approach differs from that of the airport company in several important ways:

1. The most appropriate comparisons: our approach aims to reduce the airport's environmental impact relative to its current impact; BIA aims only to reduce its future impact relative to the impact forecast by previous proposals for the airport's expansion, such as the White Paper, the Department for Transport 'Future of Air Transport' public consultation documents, and the airport company's own 'Birmingham Alternative' (2002). The draft Master Plan proposals are certainly 'more sustainable than previously proposed' (para.7.2.3), but as far as local residents are concerned the comparison that really matters is that between the airport's actual effect on their lives today and its probable effect in the future.

2. Pro-active policies: the draft Master Plan relies too heavily on 'external drivers', such as favourable trends in 'emerging technologies', national government regulatory or policy action, and the side-effects of other airport-company policies, to deliver the BIA's environmental goals. In contrast, our approach would reinforce the policy of continuous environmental improvement with clear and unambiguous targets to reduce (or at least prevent an increase in) the major environmental impacts of the airport's development and operation over the years.

This approach should not be beyond the capacity of BIA to put into practice, assuming its bosses really are as confident about the potential of improved aircraft engine design to reduce noise and pollution as they claim to be. If it is indeed the case that, owing to the 'cautious' (para.10.9) and 'conservative' (para.10.18) assumptions made with regard to future aircraft fleet mix and engine standards, the draft Master Plan paints a 'worst case scenario' (para 10.9 and para.10.40), then BIA can surely afford to set ambitious targets for environmental improvement and make its commercial growth conditional on meeting them.

3. Rejecting predict-and-provide: whereas the current 'predict-and-provide' approach aims to 'exhaust' (para.7.3.12) existing capacity and develop new capacity to accommodate forecast growth, our approach views existing airport capacity as a resource to be managed in such a way as to prevent the environmental impacts increasing over time; we reject those development proposals, such as the new Second Runway, which are driven solely by speculative forecasts of future growth in air traffic.

Crucially, our genuinely balanced approach does not preclude the airport continuing to 'serve the Midlands' need for access to air travel and air transport', or prevent it bringing 'direct economic and social benefits to the Central England Region' and supporting 'regional economic development and regeneration' (para.4.8); what it does do is place 'environmental progress' on a equal footing with economic growth and social progress, balancing these three considerations, rather than trading one off against the others.

The draft Master Plan public consultation formally closed on 31st March; BIA is currently 'analysing' responses to the consultation and expects to publish the final 'adopted' Master Plan in the middle of next year.

The publication of the Master Plan is no guarantee in itself that any of the development proposals it contains will go ahead. The previous ten-year Master Plan, published in 1995, assumed that the proposed extension of the existing Main Runway would be in operation by 2002 (a second runway was considered unnecessary); as it transpired, the runway extension was never undertaken and BIA does not now expect the extension to be completed until 2012.

Nevertheless, we should not be complacent, for although the Master Plan will not in its own right have any statutory status in the land use planning system, it could easily acquire that status by the back door, and as soon as 2009.

The Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 requires local planning authorities to prepare a Local Development Framework (LDF), a folder of planning policy and proposals documents for their area. As the planning authority with responsibility for BIA, Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council will have to produce a special policy document, called an Area Action Plan (AAP), for the future development of the airport. Under the 2004 Act, local authorities can incorporate an airport master plan in its entirety into an AAP; and if that document ends up in the Borough's LDF folder, then an airport master plan - a non-statutory business development plan - will have automatically acquired the status of legally-binding local planning policy. Needless to say, this prospect should set alarm bells ringing for campaigners, residents and their elected representatives alike.

Growing Pains

BIA commissioned a series of independent environmental impact studies to assess the likely effect of the airport's expansion on the local environment over the next twenty-five years. The research, summarised in the 2005 draft Master Plan, forecasts:

Increasing day and night-time aircraft noise:

'The increase in ATMs from 2010 through to 2030 leads to an increase in populations exposed to corresponding day and night noise contours' (para.10.12;.'The night noise contours reflect a growth in average noise over the period 2010 to 2030' (para.10.15), and 'the noise contours are forecast to increase with air traffic growth up to 2030' (para.10.18).

Deteriorating air quality:

The table on page 92 shows emissions of five air pollutants (nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide, hydrocarbons and particulates) from airport-related sources (including the M42) will increase during the plan period and even (except in the case of sulphur dioxide) reversing the downward trend in emissions from 2003-2010 after 2016, when emissions start to rise again.

More road traffic on an over-stretched network:

'Local to the Airport . . . and on key access routes within the West Midlands, the forecast growth of Birmingham International Airport will place increased demands on the surface transport network and systems' (para.9.2).

'Significant' damage to the local landscape and ecology:

'The land take of designated sites* will primarily result in a loss of nationally important grassland communities . . . as well as some woodland . . . and significant lengths of hedgerow. This cumulative effect on designated sites across this area is significant' (para.10.55).

*Sites of Importance for Nature Conservation (SINCs) and Eco-sites.

My Travel Blight

BIA's proposed new Second Runway is already blighting the surrounding area, before its construction has even begun.

The Government's 2003 White Paper, 'The Future of Air Transport', requires airport operators to produce non-statutory schemes to compensate local residents for the 'generalised' property blight caused by airport expansion proposals. BIA published the second draft of its proposed property blight compensation package last October as a supporting document to the draft Master Plan. Under the Property Valuation Support (PVS) Scheme, as it is now known, BIA will offer to purchase eligible properties, at an agreed price, from the date that, following the granting of Planning Permission, BIA confirms its intention to proceed with constructing the Second Runway.

The PVS Scheme was examined and approved by the Council of Mortgage Lenders, as well as BIA's lawyers and relationship banks (Lloyds TSB and Royal Bank of Scotland) before being incorporated into the draft Master Plan. However, the Scheme was far from well received in the community, as was clear from the two public meetings organised by the airport company to promote the draft Master Plan in November 2005 (a third public meeting, organised by residents themselves, was held in February), where local residents expressed their anger at, among other things, the arbitrary way in which BIA had determined who would and who would not be entitled to compensation.

Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council backed the residents: at a meeting on 20th January of the Council's Regeneration and Community Safety Scrutiny Board BIA was asked to note the 'continuing inadequacy' of the PVS Scheme; the 'Blight Schemes Working Group', a consultative committee set up by BIA and made up of local councillors, MPs, and representatives of local community groups, including BANG, also roundly rejected the Scheme.

To be eligible for compensation, your property must be situated within a scheme boundary corresponding to the forecast 'noise contours' for the Second Runway. BIA cites BAA Stansted's 'Home Owner Support Scheme' (published September 2004), the first such scheme of its kind, as a precedent for designing its Scheme in this way. But, precedent or no precedent, forecast noise contours tell us precisely nothing about how the plans for a Second Runway are affecting the local property market in the here and now.

Somewhat belatedly then, in January 2006 BIA approached local estate agents and solicitors with an invitation to meet with the airport management and discuss the PVS Scheme. At one of these meetings, at which I was also present, held in March at BIA's Diamond House, nine estate agents (representing six firms covering Balsall Common, Knowle, Sheldon, Yardley and Castle Bromwich) told BIA Finance Director Joe Kelly and consultant David Dudley that not only did the Scheme fail to address blight overall but that it also excluded some of the worst affected areas.

One local estate agent we talked to privately (but who requested anonymity) in May told us that he could categorise the village settlements to the south of the airport by the degree of difficulty experienced by the property market in those areas. For example, homeowners in Eastcote and Barston can expect to lose 10-15 per cent off the sale price of a typical property as a direct result of the Second Runway proposal; in Balsall Common, Hampton-in-Arden, Knowle (airport side) and Meriden the figure is 5-10 per cent. In Catherine-de-Barnes, the worst affected area according to our source, the asking price of a typical residential property can be depressed by 12-18 per cent, equivalent to £48,000-£72,000, as a direct result of the Second Runway proposal. Perversely, though, most of the properties in Catherine-de-Barnes fall outside the Scheme boundary and therefore do not qualify for compensation.

I put it to Joe Kelly that the Scheme should be amended to reflect estate agents' professional judgement of the extent and severity of blight, but it seems unlikely that this will happen. In retrospect, estate agents should have been approached two years ago, when the first draft of the compensation package was being drawn up, if not earlier. Had they been they might have shown more interest in the process: of the fifty firms approached by BIA this year only fifteen took up the invitation, and by this time there was little more that could be done, as BIA had already committed most of its resources to the 'bendy bus' public exhibitions and a series of 'one to one' surgeries with the owners of the 500 or so properties covered by the Scheme. At this stage, the best way BIA could remove the blight it has created would be for it to remove the Second Runway proposal from the Master Plan.

James Botham, Secretary, BANG

More Information

For copies of the draft Master Plan call BIA Ltd. on 0121 767 7433; for the document 'Towards 2030: Property Valuation Support Scheme' and all property enquiries call BIA on 0121 767 8082. Both documents are available on the airport website, www.bhx.co.uk.

For free copies of BANG's detailed response to the draft Master Plan, 'Towards a Genuinely Balanced Approach', and our response to the current Property Valuation Support Scheme call James Botham on 0121 632 6909 or visit www.bhamantinoise.org.uk.