CLIMATE EMERGENCY: H&F launches new court fight over Heathrow’s third runway plans

Hammersmith & Fulham Council has won permission to launch a legal appeal to challenge plans to expand Heathrow airport.

Hammersmith & Fulham Council has won permission to launch a legal appeal to challenge plans to expand Heathrow airport.

H&F – along with neighbouring councils, the Mayor of London and Greenpeace – will argue that the Government failed to properly consider the full impact of expansion on noise, health and the environment when they approved Heathrow’s third runway plans.

Cllr Stephen Cowan, Leader of the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham, said: “Expanding Heathrow is an appalling deal for taxpayers and, more importantly, potentially catastrophic for the climate.

“Not only does it fail to deliver the economic benefits claimed, but it ignores the climate emergency. Politicians cannot on the one hand claim to take climate change seriously and on the other act to make our environment much worse. We will fight this decision all the way.”

H&F has declared a climate emergency and will be taking urgent action to combat climate change by pledging to cut CO2 emissions from the council’s activities to zero by 2030.

Continued fight

In May, we expressed our disappointment in the High Court’s failure to quash the government’s Airport National Policy Statement (ANPS) regarding Heathrow expansion. We argued this could bring long-term damage to the health of millions of Londoners.

As a result, we challenged the ruling and the Court of Appeal has allowed four days for the appeal, which will start on 21 October.

We argued that the third runway could only be built by demolishing thousands of homes, adding large increases in road traffic and making life noisier and unhealthier for millions of Londoners. And that the Government had not looked at this properly.

The Court of Appeal will hear the case for the councils' case that the Secretary of State failed to consult properly on noise – excluding people who may be significantly affected. It was not possible to assess the noise impact for communities based on actual flight paths as these were not known.

We will also argue that the Secretary of State did not properly consider the significant adverse impact of Heathrow expansion on protected habitats.

Read about H&F declaring a climate emergency

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