Birmingham Airport anti-Noise Group

Issues: BIA Master Plan Contact us

January 2006

Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council Regeneration and Community Safety Scrutiny Board meeting
Friday 20th January 2006, Full Council Chamber, Civic Suite

Representation on behalf of Birmingham Airport anti-Noise Group (BANG)

Birmingham International Airport's new Draft Master Plan, 'Towards 2030', emphasises on the need to 'manage', 'mitigate' and 'minimise' the airport's environmental impacts, so as to achieve a 'balanced' approach to development, an 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' ('Towards 2030: Planning a Sustainable Future for Air Transport in the Midlands', para.6.1.2).

However, what the Draft Master Plan presents is a programme of expansion that increases the airport's environmental impacts across the board. For instance, we are told to expect:

• Worsening 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 noise contours are forecast to increase with air traffic growth up to 2030' (para.10.18).
  
• More disturbance from night flights: 'The night noise contours reflect a growth in average noise over the period 2010 to 2030' (para.10.15).
  
• Worsening 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), leading to damaging knock-on developments such as the proposed widening of the M42 motorway (SAP4, p82).
  
• More loss of Green Belt and ecologically important sites: '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).
  
• An overall increase in airport-related greenhouse gas emissions (although no attempt to quantify this impact has been attempted).
  

A development programme that pursues economic and social gain at the expense of the environment in this way is neither 'balanced' nor 'sustainable'. I believe a truly sustainable, balanced approach would be one that seeks to achieve not just economic and social progress, but environmental progress, too. This requires that the Airport Company's stated policy of 'continuous environmental improvement' (para.10.1) be applied consistently throughout the plan period, backed up by clear, unambiguous targets for reducing the Airport's major environmental impacts. Only by adopting this approach can the Airport Company meet the reasonable expectation of local residents that the impact of the airport's operations on their lives will decrease, or, at the very least, not increase over the plan period.

I am confident that a genuinely balanced approach to development is within the Airport Company's power to put into practice. If it is indeed the case that, owing to the use of 'conservative' (para.10.18) estimates of future improvements in aircraft engine technology, the Draft Master Plan presents a 'worst case scenario', then BIA can afford to set ambitious targets for continuous environmental improvement; and there can be no reason to allow the rate of growth in air transport to overtake the rate of environmental improvement brought about through innovations in aircraft design and operational mitigation methods.

Any targets for environmental improvement must be unambiguous and based on 'real' figures. For example, in the case of the 'long-term target of 25% Public Transport Modal Share' (para.9.5) a small proportionate increase in public transport use disguises the significant real increase in airport-related surface traffic. This applies also the 'White Paper strategy to 'clawback' aviation activity from the south-east, and to reduce unnecessary surface journeys (para.9.1). Here, a small increase in the proportion of the regional demand for air travel being served locally disguises a significant real increase in the total volume of air and surface journeys in the UK, and all the environmental damage that such an increase entails.

Although it will not in itself have any statutory status in the new land use planning system, the real danger is that, under the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act (2004), BIA's adopted Master Plan will find its way into statutory planning policy in the form of the Solihull Local Development Framework (LDF), via an Area Action Plan. The Airport Company clearly envisage that their Master Plan will 'inform' (Foreword, p1), and be 'considered for inclusion' in, the new Solihull LDF, along with the West Midlands Spatial Strategy and 'any other relevant Local Development Frameworks, Development Plans, Economic Strategies and Environmental Strategies' (para.12.8). But the Master Plan is a commercial business plan, nothing more; it must not be allowed to dictate the planning policy of democratically elected local governments.

As the relevant local planning authority, Solihull MBC must recognise that they (a) have Sustainable Development, Noise and Transport policy obligations under Planning Policy Statement 1 (PPS1: 'Creating sustainable development'), Planning Policy Guidance 24 (PPG24: 'Planning and noise'), and Planning Policy Guidance 13 (PPG13: 'Transport'), that may conflict with the proposals in BIA's Master Plan; and (b) are legally obliged to organise inclusive and widespread participation in the preparation of an action plan with the requirements of the local Statement of Community Involvement, national guidance and the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) directive (2001).

On a related point, the current draft of the Airport Company's 'Property Value Protection Scheme' (para.2.1.6, p7) states that residents will not be able to apply for Option Agreements until the Master Plan is formally incorporated into Solihull's LDF Plan in 2009. I urge Solihull MBC to insist that the Airport Company accept homeowners' applications as soon as the final version of the Scheme is published, i.e. from the date of publication of the adopted Master Plan later this year.

Finally, some of you may be thinking that BIA could not adopt the genuinely balanced approach summarised above without incurring a significant competitive disadvantage compared to other, more aggressively 'expansionist' airport operators elsewhere in the region and in the country as a whole, and I share this concern. It so happens that the Government will be reviewing its 2003 Air Transport White Paper this year. I urge all those present to join BANG in using this opportunity to argue for a truly sustainable, balanced approach to airport development, not just here in the Midlands but across the UK as a whole.

James Botham
Secretary