Transport Committee
Oral evidence: Airports National Policy Statement, HC 548
Monday 15 January 2018
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 15 January 2018.
Members present: Lilian Greenwood (Chair); Ronnie Cowan; Paul Girvan; Huw Merriman; Luke Pollard; Iain Stewart; Martin Vickers; Daniel Zeichner.
Questions 234 - 321
Witnesses
I: Councillor Paul Hodgins, Leader of the Council, London Borough of Richmond upon Thames; Brendon Walsh, Chairman of the Officer Group, Heathrow Strategic Planning Group; Joseph Carter, Chairman of the Transport Sub-Group, Heathrow Strategic Planning Group; Val Shawcross CBE, Deputy Mayor of London for Transport; and Alex Williams, Director of City Planning, Transport for London.
II: Mr Parmjit Dhanda, Executive Director, Back Heathrow; John Stewart, Chair, Heathrow Association for the Control of Aircraft Noise; and Stephen Clark, No 3rd Runway Coalition.
Written evidence from witnesses:
– London Boroughs of Wandsworth, Richmond, Hillingdon, and the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead
– Heathrow Strategic Planning Group (HSPG)
Witnesses: Councillor Hodgins, Brendon Walsh, Joseph Carter, Val Shawcross and Alex Williams.
Q234 Chair: Welcome, and thank you for coming along today. For the record of our proceedings, could I ask you to introduce yourselves and say which organisation you represent?
Joseph Carter: I am Joseph Carter. I represent Heathrow Strategic Planning Group as the chair of the transport sub-group.
Brendon Walsh: My name is Brendon Walsh. I am the chair of Heathrow Strategic Planning Group.
Councillor Hodgins: My name is Paul Hodgins and I am leader of Richmond council. I am here on behalf of the leaders of the boroughs of Richmond, Wandsworth and Hillingdon, and the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead. Should the NPS in the end be designated, together we are four councils committed to lodging a legal challenge against it.
Val Shawcross: I am Val Shawcross. I am the deputy mayor for transport in London. I am here representing the Mayor of London and the Greater London Authority. The Mayor continues to oppose the expansion of Heathrow.
Alex Williams: I am Alex Williams. I am director of city planning at Transport for London.
Q235 Chair: Thank you very much. We have a lot of questions, so when you answer, if you are in agreement on something, I would appreciate it if you could just say that and add additional information rather than repeat the same thing; otherwise, we will not manage to get through everything we want to hear from you this afternoon.
Obviously, there is a host of different surface access schemes that are either committed to or assumed to accompany a third runway. Those include western and southern rail access and a host of road schemes. In your opinion, will those be sufficient to deal with the increase in passenger demand that would result from an expanded Heathrow? Perhaps we can start with Transport for London.
Alex Williams: Our concern is about the word “committed.” We hear warm words in the NPS, but we do not hear firm statements about commitment. They come across as being desirable rather than essential. That is the difference between ourselves and the NPS. We see them as essential to getting anywhere near the mode shift targets.
Q236 Chair: You say they should be essential. If they were in place, would they be sufficient?
Alex Williams: No. The NPS sets out some mode share targets for public transport: 50% by 2030 and 55% by 2041. It is probably worth thinking about the scale of the task. At the moment, Heathrow generates 235,000 trips a day. With expansion, that goes up to circa 370,000 a day, and that is on networks that anyone who has used Heathrow knows are congested, cramped and have their own stresses and strains—the M25, the M4 and the Piccadilly line. In the NPS, the only thing that is formally committed to is the Piccadilly line upgrade, where we are providing a 60% increase in capacity, and the Crossrail and Elizabeth lines that we are providing by 2019. The other proposals, for western and southern rail access, are not confirmed as essential. Our view is that they would not be sufficient in their own way—in their own right. If you are serious about having no increase in vehicular traffic, as Heathrow and we are, you need to go beyond those, with a high-quality southern rail access scheme that genuinely increases capacity, and you also need to move to the issue of demand management.
The first draft of the NPS was completely silent on that issue and did not recognise it. The second draft has five words on it. Our view is that some form of demand management is absolutely essential to get anywhere near the aspiration of HAL of no increase in vehicular traffic, let alone the NPS aspiration of 50% of trips by public transport. If you just stick with the 50% NPS target, you are accepting substantial growth in vehicular traffic on the road network—between 40,000 and 60,000 vehicles a day on already congested road networks—so we have a fundamental problem to deal with.
Q237 Chair: What percentage of traffic would have to be on public transport for there not to be an increase in road vehicles?
Alex Williams: At the moment, it is 39% by public transport; the NPS says 50% going up to 55%. We think that between 65% and 70%, probably 69%, would have to come by public transport to meet the threshold of no extra vehicle trips on the road network. It is a tough ask to get to that level. Our concern is that the NPS is nowhere near there, and consequently we will all be dealing with substantial increases in traffic on our road networks.
Val Shawcross: Alex mentioned the upgrade of the Piccadilly line and the Crossrail service. You need to be absolutely clear that those services are being provided and upgraded because of existing population growth. They are to deal with existing congestion on the network, so they do not provide for additional growth from Heathrow expansion at all.
It is also worth mentioning that, although there seems to be a basket of at least half a dozen rail access ideas floating around, some are much worse, and some are better, than others, so they need to be picked through very carefully. A proposal that would capture existing track used for existing commuters on some of the most constrained and overcrowded track networks in the country is not at all adequate, so the type and nature of surface access needs to be looked at.
As a small piece of history, those of you who were around during the debate on terminal 5 may know that there was a lot of encouragement for the idea of an air track proposal, which would have provided a new surface line into Waterloo. That was never required and of course it never happened. There is some bad history around all of this.
Q238 Chair: Do other members of the panel have specific comments to add on whether the schemes that have been proposed, albeit not certainly committed to, would be sufficient to deal with the increase in passenger demand from an expanded Heathrow?
Councillor Hodgins: For Richmond, for example, despite our proximity to Heathrow, the expansion of the Piccadilly line and Crossrail would not directly help the majority of our borough. They are not easy to access; they would not increase the ease of getting there. On that basis, without any other details, there certainly would not be an increased incentive and there would not be modal change.
To add to what Val said about the increase in London, a crucial point is that this is happening at the same time as London is projected to grow very significantly, so public investment in infrastructure needs to go to that. This is on top of that. Therefore, I think it is very doubtful that what is proposed, and the vagueness of what is proposed, will be able to handle it.
Brendon Walsh: The Heathrow Strategic Planning Group represents 12 local authorities and the local LEPs in the area. We too agree that it is essential rather than desirable to see southern and western rail access. We were encouraged to see both mentioned in the document, but we are concerned to make sure that progress is made on both quickly.
We would also like to see other transport solutions investigated. Most recently, we have seen local authorities such as Spelthorne coming forward with light railway solutions that would open up land and opportunity; similarly Hounslow. I used to work for Hounslow. A lot of work was done to link places like the golden mile—the Great West Road—to the Crossrail station at Southall. These are relatively easy things to deliver. I say that advisedly; Alex may think differently. The more we can do to link places using public transport, the better.
Joseph Carter: From the transport sub-group point of view, I cannot say that at this point we have concluded yes or no on the question. However, we are working on a joint evidence base, so that we can formulate a response based on the evidence we gather in terms of transport modelling, what the surface access strategy will deliver and how much modal shift we can expect to public transport. Having said those things, they are all interlinked. Largely, I would not disagree with what the rest of the panel said.
Q239 Chair: Brendon, I think you started to talk about some of the other schemes that might be required and possible if you wanted to avoid undue extra congestion. Is there anything you want to add to what you have already said?
Brendon Walsh: It is encouraging that there is a marker put down in the NPS about southern and western rail access. We need to move quite quickly to work out who pays. As I understand it, Heathrow is prepared to contribute, but it goes beyond just the airport. It is a busy transport interchange and contributions need to come more widely, but it is an essential part of the solution for Heathrow going forward.
Q240 Chair: Do other members of the panel have anything to add in relation to what other schemes might be required to avoid extra or harmful congestion arising from an expanded Heathrow?
Alex Williams: The only thing I would say on southern rail access is that, as Val said, there are four, five or six versions of that scheme. We are in a situation where, in theory, the airport could be open by 2026 and, under the latest forecast, full within a two-year period. We are 10 years away from potentially substantial increases on the network around there. At the moment, we have no idea what southern rail access is. There are four or five proposals, but we have no criteria even to assess what the scheme will be, or what it would seek to achieve. Our concern is about the embryonic state of that scheme compared with the pace at which Heathrow is being delivered. A lot of catch-up work has to be done to make it a credible, firm scheme that will be delivered along with expansion.
Q241 Chair: You have already started to touch on my second question. Given that the Government now expect the extra capacity, if built, to be fully utilised by 2028, would that place surface access under even greater strain? You have already said yes. Do other members of the panel have the same view?
Joseph Carter: It is a fairly straightforward yes.
Val Shawcross: Yes.
Councillor Hodgins: Absolutely, and it has not been modelled appropriately yet.
Q242 Chair: Do you think that impact has been properly assessed by the Department?
Councillor Hodgins: On air quality, economic impact, transport and sound, no, I do not think it has been adequately modelled. It has a big impact, because within the NPS what seems to be left for Heathrow, in comparison with the benefits for Gatwick, is that it brings benefits sooner rather than later. It is crucial that the impacts on all of those elements are modelled, because it will bring them forward and we will not be able to get that kind of behavioural shift in the time.
Alex Williams: We are not aware of, or we have not seen, evidence from the DFT on the modelling of the highway impacts of the scheme. In the absence of that information, we have done our own analysis of the mode share targets and the potential implications of not meeting them. We have come to the view that, even if you got to the NPS targets, it would equate to an extra 40,000 to 60,000 vehicle trips on the network per day. In the context that the roads around there already exceed the air quality limits, we cannot see how those two will go together—how you can achieve the air quality limits with that scale of increase. We will be very happy to send you a technical note after this meeting with more evidence on that. Through your Clerk, we offered to give you more information on the analysis we have done in the absence of DFT analysis.
Q243 Chair: We will have some further questions on air quality in a few moments. Brendon, do you want to deal with that specific point?
Brendon Walsh: Obviously, if we can get the rail infrastructure in place, the benefits that will accrue from an expanded airport could be shared with a wider population rather than just the immediate population.
Chair: One of the issues is freight. Iain has some questions about the implications of freight changes.
Q244 Iain Stewart: We have been looking at the impact of increased passenger traffic on surface access, but the NPS envisages a doubling in freight capacity at an expanded Heathrow. What sort of impact do you think that will have on surface access?
Alex Williams: The NPS is interesting in regard to freight. There is a difference between what the NPS is saying and what HAL is saying in this regard. As far as I can recall, the NPS sets out no objectives to reduce, manage or consolidate that to reduce the impacts on the wider network. HAL would like an arrangement where there is no increase in the overall volume of trips. We see no strategy from HAL as to how that will be achieved. It is the right objective in our view, but there is no detailed evidence base to say how it will be achieved.
In regard to the NPS, which is why we are here today, we are surprised that there is no component in the strategy that sets out how freight movements will be managed or reduced, as you would expect to see. One of the big challenges we face in managing the road network in central London is the growth of freight, vans in particular, and the Mayor and Val are asking us to come up with strategies to see how that can be reduced and managed. I find it odd that the NPS does not seek to address that.
Q245 Iain Stewart: Does anyone else want to add anything?
Brendon Walsh: On the use of land around the airport, there is quite a lot of pressure as to whether it is given over to residential development to service the new jobs that would come. Arguably, if southern and western rail access and some of the other solutions were brought to bear, more of the land could be given over to logistics. More passengers and workers using public transport would take pressure off the roads, and freight could then be better catered for using the road network.
Q246 Iain Stewart: Have you seen any evidence that the surface access schemes—western and southern rail access—have freight capacity in mind, or are they entirely passenger projects?
Councillor Hodgins: I have not seen any evidence of that.
Alex Williams: That is exactly right.
Brendon Walsh: This is symptomatic of the planning for the new infrastructure not having been started. It is a very good question. It should be posed and we should have an answer, because we should be further on in terms of planning for these things.
Chair: We move on to the cost of surface access.
Q247 Luke Pollard: My question is to Val and Alex. The Department for Transport estimates that the cost of surface access will be about £5 billion, but Transport for London puts that figure closer to £15 billion. What accounts for the difference between those two figures?
Alex Williams: The main area of difference is southern rail access. I should emphasise at the start that the responsibility for costing and estimating the surface access rests with the Department and HAL. It does not rest with us. We are not building that infrastructure. If we were doing that, we would give you a much more credible figure.
Our understanding of the surface access cost is that it is circa £4 billion. That is for the changes to the M25, M4 and A4. We are not in disagreement with them on that. I think western rail access was estimated to be circa £1.5 billion. It is a Network Rail scheme that we want to see delivered, but it is their responsibility to cost it accurately with the DFT and agree the appropriate funding contribution from Heathrow airport.
The difference between us in terms of costing relates to the difference in the product for southern rail access. If you go for the air track-type scheme, which is just a spur, it is relatively cheap at £1 billion or so—cheap in transport terms. Our concern is that it is a spur into a very congested and heavily used network anyway, so it is not adding extra capacity. The extra costs are from different variants of the southern rail access route. If you went for a southern rail access route with more tunnelling, plugging into Kingston and then Waterloo, it would be more expensive.
We are not wedded to a particular scheme or alignment. We are wedded to genuine extra capacity for the extra demand that clearly an expanded airport would cater for. We are working with HAL and the DFT to work out the criteria for any southern rail access scheme. We feel there is urgency to crack on with that work, but the responsibility for estimating it rests with the Department and HAL, not ourselves.
Val Shawcross: Although TfL wants to be very collegiate in dealing with and working on these technical issues, it has been excluded from the surface access steering group for Heathrow by the Department for Transport, even though TfL is the highways authority and the public transport authority that completely surrounds Heathrow. The DFT is, therefore, not looking anxiously enough at the real knowledge, expertise and modelling capacity that Transport for London has.
Q248 Luke Pollard: Do you think the lack of clarity around surface access funding and how much it is going to cost adds further question marks to the viability and feasibility of the scheme?
Alex Williams: Absolutely.
Val Shawcross: The complete failure to attend properly to the reality of the surface access needs of an expanded Heathrow lies at the heart of the problems we see coming in traffic congestion, public transport congestion and the displacement of existing passengers; we should be concerned about passengers from Surrey as well as the rest of London. It absolutely underlines the issues we see coming on air quality, because it will push road traffic.
Alex Williams: It is worth noting that, when the NPS was published last year, Heathrow also put out a document giving their position on southern and western rail access. They made it very clear that they saw neither of those schemes as essential but both of them as desirable. My take on it is that they are hoping or expecting other parts of the world to pay for it, and that they should not be on the hook for paying for it. I think that position is a marker that they want the public, or some other body, to pay for it. That is one of our big concerns.
Q249 Luke Pollard: That brings me neatly to my next question, which is for Brendon and Paul. Considering where we are in the NPS process, do you think it is appropriate that the contribution Heathrow is supposed to make is only a “suggested” contribution at this point, and work has not been done properly to spec out what that contribution should be against which scheme should be delivered, especially if, as the argument has been put, it is essential rather than desirable?
Brendon Walsh: I will ask Joe to comment in detail because his group has been working on it. You are absolutely right. We should be much further on in working out who gets to pay for these things. We have had presentations at HSPG from the private sector that southern rail access could be provided fully funded by the private sector, so we need to explore those things. If that is the reality, why should the taxpayer have to pay? Alternatively, if it does not work, we should strike it out and look for a better solution.
Joseph Carter: I return partly to the point I made earlier about the joint evidence base, which goes to the issue of passenger transport models. If we have an agreed joint evidence base we can all start from, we can look at how costs get apportioned. What we do not have at the moment is enough detail around those things—an agreed list of schemes that are required—so that we are able to work out how they are actually done.
Councillor Hodgins: If we take the figures that have been suggested, at a qualitative level the case depends on a huge modal shift, including from areas that are not well served by public transport to Heathrow, so clearly the investment will be significant. In all of these discussions, we need to make sure that we are not looking at Heathrow, and the different figures, in isolation. There is always a comparison with what investment is required at Gatwick. Therefore, in the overall comparison of the benefits, or lack of additional benefits, of Heathrow, we should always consider why, whether or not Heathrow makes a contribution, we would draw investment desperately needed for the growth of London, and around the country, into that option, when we have a much cheaper option at Gatwick that can bring just as many benefits and, on some measures, even more benefits over the long term.
Q250 Iain Stewart: The no-more-traffic pledge made by Heathrow is based on a public transport mode share target of 50% by 2030 and 55% by 2040. Mr Williams, you think that mode share figure needs to be nearer 70% to achieve no increase in car transport. We have different claims. Is the evidence on which you base that assertion publicly available to be used to challenge Heathrow?
Alex Williams: It is in the Mayor’s statements that have been provided in relation to the consultations. There are two different positions. HAL has not said that the 50% mode share will mean no extra traffic. I think they accept that to get no extra traffic you have to go well above 50%. Our view is that 69% would make sure there is no extra vehicular traffic on the road network. That is already in the public domain, but we are very happy to provide another supplementary technical note after this meeting to give you more analysis and evidence. We have done that detailed piece of work because we have not received anything from the DFT that gives us confidence that 50% is enough.
One of our fundamental concerns about the NPS is that the mode share targets are unambitious; they are not ambitious enough. Consequently, we will see between 40,000 and 60,000 extra vehicles on the road networks surrounding Heathrow, and we all know from our experience of using those roads that they are already congested and will struggle to cope with that.
Q251 Iain Stewart: Councillor Hodgins and Mr Walsh, how should Heathrow be held accountable for the pledge of no additional traffic? Should it be a binding commitment as part of the NPS?
Councillor Hodgins: My starting position is that the expansion should go to Gatwick in the first place, not just to Heathrow.
Q252 Iain Stewart: Let’s assume that Heathrow goes ahead.
Councillor Hodgins: I am not assuming that it is going ahead.
Q253 Iain Stewart: Hypothetically, should it be a binding target?
Councillor Hodgins: It is up to Heathrow to prove that they can serve that claim and how they are going to do it. There is talk about a very significant congestion charge around Heathrow in order to have the demand management to meet that target, which will bring an additional cost to all users that would not happen at Gatwick. They will have to take measures that cost residents and users more, not just locally but around the country, in order to control that demand against the alternative of Gatwick.
Brendon Walsh: The opportunity is to measure both. You can measure the amount of traffic on the roads and you could cap the amount of expansion in line with that, so that they do not get the expansion if they fail to take the car movements off the road. It is quite simple.
Q254 Huw Merriman: Is there a danger, with the contention from Heathrow that there will not be additional traffic movements and your contention that there would have to be, that nobody has had a chance to see what Crossrail will actually do in shifting the dynamics? If 40 extra stations are connected, and it will be possible to go from Liverpool Street to Heathrow in just over half an hour, rather than almost an hour at the moment, there could well be a shift towards public transport when Crossrail opens, meaning that you do not need as much transport built in.
Alex Williams: Our modelling already assumes the upgrade of the Piccadilly line and a 60% increase in capacity; it already assumes the Elizabeth line’s six trains per hour in terms of extra capacity. That gets you from 39% by public transport, as it is now, to the mid-40s, so that investment is already factored into our modal choice modelling. We are saying that to achieve the HAL aspiration, with which we agree, of no extra vehicular traffic, that mid-40s mode share needs to stretch right up to 69%. Our view is that there is not a credible strategy to achieve that from what we have seen thus far.
Q255 Huw Merriman: Isn’t there a danger that your model can be based only on assumptions? To give an example from the City of London, an area where I have worked, rather than going all the way to Paddington and getting the Heathrow Express, I would just take a car, certainly not the Piccadilly line. Additionally, in an area like Acton, where I used to live, I would not go all the way to Paddington to come back, so Crossrail has a big dilemma for both those constituent parts. We do not really know exactly how impactful Crossrail will be, because it is not yet open.
Alex Williams: All I would say is that we have some excellent rail plan models that model the rail network all over London. We have modelled the introduction of the Elizabeth line and that extra capacity. It is a big increase in capacity and it makes a significant difference—I agree with you there—but my point is that the scale of the increase in demand is substantial; it goes from 235,000 to 370,000 trips a day just for expansion, but you also have to take into account, as Val said, that Crossrail and the Elizabeth line, as well as the Piccadilly line, are about coping with London’s growth. London is projected to grow from 8.7 million to 10.5 million people over the next 25 years. Other calls on that extra capacity are putting a lot of pressure on the network already, but in our mode shift analysis we have absolutely taken into account the extra capacity that Crossrail and the Elizabeth line provide.
Brendon Walsh: We would worry about a wait-and-see approach. This is too important not to get it right. We cannot build extra airport capacity and then not be able to service it. To do that would be intolerable. We have an opportunity, if we can get moving with transport planning, to see what the best solutions are. It could be a mixture of a number of things. It might be light rail; it might be heavy rail. All of these things may have a part to play, but we have to get moving with the planning if we are serious about it.
Q256 Chair: If there was a binding surface access target, could that potentially undermine the business case for Heathrow expansion?
Brendon Walsh: I do not think we know, until we see what the numbers look like and how various parties should or could contribute. It could be that the private sector will pick up quite a significant chunk of the cost of these things.
Joseph Carter: One of the things we have been unable to explore is exactly what that looks like and what it means. As you will have heard in some of the evidence so far, are we talking about a known increase over an area immediately around the airport campus, or is it a cordon that is 2 km, 5 km or 10 km away? The impacts are felt at different levels across those zones.
Q257 Chair: More precision is what you need, and more certainty. Is that right?
Joseph Carter: More certainty about what that commitment is.
Councillor Hodgins: This is a very important point. We all have our own models, and forecasting is very difficult, but one thing we should look for is for those models to be transparent. It is not just an either/or. There are a lot of assumptions in any forecasting, and you should be looking at a level of risk. Somebody can come up with their expected case, but we have to ask what the chances are that it would deviate from that, which would be an additional level of information that we just do not have at the moment.
Chair: So far, we have focused largely on congestion, but one of the knock-on impacts of congestion is around air quality. Ronnie has our next set of questions.
Q258 Ronnie Cowan: The local air quality modelling shows that an expanded Heathrow will result in worse air quality for over 121,000 people and 47,000 households. Those numbers equate to an area that expands to 2 km beyond the airport. Will the air quality implications go beyond that 2 km?
Val Shawcross: The air quality impact of the expansion of Heathrow is one of the most serious areas of concern. We think that the NPS completely fails to show how you could expand Heathrow without worsening air quality, not just locally but with an impact across central London as well. As you are probably aware, a lot of work has been done by Transport for London and the Mayor of London on trying to tackle the illegal levels of air pollution in London at the moment. Roughly half of that comes from transport sources. There are substantial programmes in place to try to reduce that air quality impact. At the moment, something like 40% of the most polluted roads in the UK are in London, so it is extremely serious.
With all of the Mayor’s programmes in place, which Londoners will be paying for—we are getting no Government money at all for that—we might get close to satisfying the legal requirements around 2025, in terms of having improved our air quality. However, the expanded Heathrow would probably, we think from our projections, delay London having significant improvement in its air quality and, potentially, reaching legal standards of air quality, by another five years. We are talking about an expanded Heathrow delaying substantial air quality improvements in London until 2030.
The problem we have is that it seems to us that all the investment in air quality work that the Mayor and TfL are doing at the moment, which Londoners are paying for through their T charge and will be paying for through their ultra-low emission zone charges, and are paying for now through the major investment going on in cleaning up every one of London’s 9,000 buses, is being banked by Heathrow and the Government in the NPS and being used as free headroom. While we are fighting quite hard to improve the health of Londoners and air quality in London, the Heathrow expansion story, as we currently see it in the NPS, would blow that improvement away. We are really concerned about that; it will risk delaying London’s compliance until 2030 or beyond.
Q259 Chair: Do you have specific evidence that shows how air quality beyond the 2 km area, particularly in central London, is impacted by Heathrow itself, rather than by general increases in London’s traffic?
Alex Williams: We have modelled all the impacts of our interventions up to 2021, and the roads around Heathrow still exceed the limits, as they do in central London. We can provide maps further to this meeting; it is probably better that we provide maps rather than list the roads, partly because I do not have that list in my head. We can certainly supply the modelling analysis as we see it thus far. The root of the problem is the lack of a credible surface access strategy, which leads to the increase in traffic on the roads. That scale of increase in areas that exceed limits means that it is very hard to bring it down to achieve those limits, or it will delay compliance until 2030, as Val says.
Val Shawcross: The traffic generated will not just hover around Heathrow; that is the point. It puts more traffic on to the road network generally. Indeed, we have a resident population around Heathrow that we have to be concerned about. It is already a very serious pollution hotspot.
Councillor Hodgins: Of course, coming from the four boroughs and representing people very close to Heathrow, this is a critical issue for us. Air quality is the reason why we are confident that Heathrow expansion will not survive the legal challenge, once we get to that point. It will be focused on air quality, and we do not believe that they have shown that they can meet the limits. Of course, poor air quality translates to poorer health for those impacted, as you said. Ultimately, it is a matter for the rest of the country, because those health issues then have a bigger draw on the NHS and draw on resources. It is a matter for everybody.
It is not just about looking at Heathrow in isolation; it is about looking at the alternative, and far fewer people would be impacted by Gatwick. As Val said, we are also trying to improve air quality for residents. This is not just about having a limit and trying to stick under it; it is about looking at what we can do to make the quality of life as good as we possibly can for all residents, which means trying to bring it down as low as we can, not just trying to hit a target. This does not do that.
Brendon Walsh: From my time working for the London Borough of Hounslow, we found that the M4, M25 and A4 corridors created a significant contribution to the poor quality of the air in the area. It goes straight back to southern and western rail access and public transport solutions that take people out of their cars when they are going to work and travelling to the airport, so that we minimise the impact that way.
Q260 Daniel Zeichner: To expand on that slightly, the Government tell us that their 2017 air quality plan—the most recent version—and the surface access measures we have been talking about will be enough to enable legal compliance with air quality regulations. I think you have already said that you are not convinced about that, and it would be interesting to hear whether others agree with you. If you are not convinced, what do you think needs to be done to allow Heathrow expansion to happen without putting an unnecessary health burden on your residents? With all this, do you think there is a risk of further judicial review, which could delay the whole process anyway?
Val Shawcross: I agree with my colleague: it goes back to the inadequacy of the surface transport provisions, which is very largely where the poor air quality arises. Unless there is decent provision for surface access by public transport, you will not solve the problem.
It is worth noting that the Government’s air quality plan, which we believe is very poor and inadequate, already banks and relies on the programmes being taken forward in London by the Mayor, such as the ultra-low emission zone and the T charge and cleaning up the buses and taxis, but does not actually propose additional actions in London. Worse than that, London has been explicitly told that it will not be able to access any of the £220 million clean air fund. That would have helped to accelerate cleaning up, with a scrappage scheme for diesel, or something like that, but that £220 million is not available to us; nor will we get any of the £255 million implementation funding to which other cities have access. Despite the fact that London drivers pay their vehicle tax, and pay tax every time they buy petrol, London drivers and London’s population will not have access to any of the air quality funding that the Government are making available, even though we have 40% of the worst roads, and the situation is potentially seriously undermined by the expansion of Heathrow. There are very serious issues. London’s needs are being very much neglected.
We would like to see a clean air Act. We have talked a lot about the transport sources of pollution, but of course there are many static sources, such as central heating. Any development provokes air quality issues. There are very serious issues in London, and the Government seem set to ignore them in terms of the air quality crisis.
Councillor Hodgins: I agree with colleagues that air quality is tied to surface transport, which then gets us back into conversation about public investment for that. We then get back to comparing it with far less investment at Gatwick for the same or better benefits. And no, I do not think it is going to survive a judicial review. We will be bringing that legal case.
Q261 Daniel Zeichner: This is a question particularly for Brendon and Paul. I think you have already hinted that you have concerns that expansion might prevent other local authorities complying with their own legal air quality obligations. Can you say a little more about that? Is there enough clarity about who exactly will be accountable for breaches? Does the NPS need to specify minimum air quality targets and monitoring requirements?
Councillor Hodgins: It will come back to traffic and transport in our own boroughs, passing through and leading into them. Ultimately, the accountability will certainly not sit with Heathrow, if it ever gets implemented; it will be put back on to the public and the public purse.
Brendon Walsh: I am perhaps more trusting of the words in the NPS about not breaching the legal limit, but I have concerns, having looked after the service in the local authority context, that individual local authorities are not well placed to manage a project of this scale. It would be better to have an independent body that oversaw and measured air quality.
Q262 Chair: The other main environmental issue is of course noise. An expanded Heathrow will cause significant noise annoyance for maybe 92,000 people, with significant health impacts for thousands of others. The NPS states that development consent should not be granted if noise results in “significant adverse impacts on health and quality of life.” Do you think we can have confidence that a planning application from Heathrow would pass that test?
Councillor Hodgins: As somebody who lives under the flightpath and represents residents who do too, we do not know about that because the flightpaths have not been confirmed. That number is a minimum number, and people who are not impacted at the moment, who will be impacted, really have not had the information they need to know what that impact is going to be. It is additional noise from an airport that already impacts more people than the next three largest competitors in Europe combined. It would add more people impacted by noise than at Manchester Airport in total, but it will also reduce the respite that people currently impacted have. It will increase the number of people impacted, and it will increase the impact on those who are already suffering from noise pollution.
Q263 Chair: The Government have confined the noise impact analysis to a very defined area of west London, which means that places like Teddington and Ealing are ignored in the estimates. Do you think there is a risk that that approach has misrepresented the scale of the noise impacts in London?
Councillor Hodgins: I would not say it was a risk. I would say it was a certainty, if they are not including that, and we do not have certainty on where the flightpaths are going to be, and the impact on planes. It is not only that they cannot accurately model it and give us the number, but they cannot communicate it to residents.
Q264 Chair: Do other members of the panel think there should be more detail in the NPS on the noise requirements for a development consent application?
Brendon Walsh: I do not think we can know until the airspace changes are identified. I agree with Paul on that. The one thing we would see as needing to be sacrosanct is the ban on night flights. People need to have respite through those six and a half hours, and making absolutely certain that that carries through is extremely important to the populations who live close to the airport.
Val Shawcross: Transport for London has done some assessment work on that. We think that an additional 200,000 people would be affected by significant aircraft noise. We accept that something like three quarters of a million people are already affected, so potentially the expansion could push 1 million people to experience significant noise nuisance. We are very concerned about that.
Q265 Chair: Why is there a difference between the figure of an extra 92,000 in the NPS and your figure, which sounds significantly higher?
Val Shawcross: We are pleased that the noise threshold has been reduced slightly, which would increase the numbers being captured in our assessment. To that extent, it is good. We certainly agree with Councillor Hodgins that there is a lot of uncertainty about issues like flightpaths. There is also some concern about the fact that some technical improvements that would have been made in aircraft anyway are being banked within the proposals rather than being seen as an opportunity to improve the situation. My colleague will remind me.
Alex Williams: We would be happy to supply more information afterwards on the noise modelling. It is very difficult accurately to predict it, as other speakers have said, before the flightpaths are confirmed, and you will not get that confirmation until after the NPS has been designated. It is a bit chicken and egg. How can we be expected to answer those questions with absolute certainty? We can on surface access, because we know what infrastructure is coming, but not on flightpaths. There are five different consultations out at the moment, which we have written to HAL about. There is a plethora of consultations on the issue, and it is very difficult for us as a technical body to understand it, let alone for lay people who are residents of west London to understand what it could mean for them. There is a lot of confusion on noise, and I do not think it is helped by the fact that we are not getting the information we need to make an informed judgment until after the NPS is designated. That cannot possibly work.
Val Shawcross: There is not necessarily any certainty about the flightpaths; even at that stage, they will not necessarily be required to be designated.
The Mayor very strongly supports the proposal that Gatwick would be a preferable option for expansion. It is very clear to us that the numbers exposed to noise from Heathrow would be 40 times the number affected by Gatwick, if not more. The environmental impact of noise is much less for an expanded Gatwick.
Chair: We wanted to come to the issue around flightpaths. I’m not sure whether there is more that we need to tease out on this subject.
Q266 Paul Girvan: That leads into what I was going to ask. Is it fair that residents and MPs are kept in the dark about the potential noise impact of an expanded Heathrow? I appreciate that the Government have stated that they would like a set of flightpaths in one direction, but we know that they do not always end up being the outcomes that the public and everybody else gets. Could I have your comments on that? Do you think there should be more emphasis on the noise impact within the NPS, and that it does not rightly reflect the total impact that this expansion will have on the community?
Alex Williams: I agree with that point; it is a very fair point to make. People need to be able to make an informed judgment on the impacts, and there is a lack of information to be able to make that judgment.
Councillor Hodgins: It is very concerning. It makes Heathrow look not good. Why are they not able to come out and give that information? It is not good for the NPS or the Government. People need certainty, when certainty can be given. When people do not know if they will be impacted, they do not engage or learn as much as when they have certainty that they will be impacted. You would certainly have more involvement from the public if we had that, and it would be fairer, but you would also look more clearly at the comparison with Gatwick.
I go back to the point that, unless there are significant benefits for Heathrow over Gatwick, which the NPS clearly shows there are not, you would be saying, “How can we improve the quality of life for people in that area, and not just hit the targets?” If we have technical advances that will reduce noise, that is fantastic, but let’s get some of the benefit of that for people, rather than just trying to keep it as it is at the moment, dubious as that claim is.
Chair: We will consider the issue of flightpaths a bit further.
Q267 Ronnie Cowan: We have heard concerns that the flightpaths proposed by Heathrow may not be feasible. It boils down to a game of “he says, she says,” because no major work has been completed on the technical and safety feasibility of the flightpath changes required for the northwest runway. Do you think it is reasonable that no such assessment has been made by the Government?
Val Shawcross: From a public point of view, although this is a large generalisation, noise is a primary issue of concern; it is not a side issue or a minor detail. It is therefore very distressing to hundreds of thousands of people that there is such lack of certainty in terms of modelling and planning and a clear determination of what would be the best routes or flightpaths to be developed. That is one way in which the Government and the community in London have very much parted company. This is the first issue that people talk about when we discuss Heathrow, not the last.
Councillor Hodgins: You mentioned a word that does not get covered nearly enough: safety. Safety is a huge issue. In the last year, we have seen that with the tragedies we have had and the difficulties in responding should any big event occur. The sheer number of additional flights going over such a large population raises huge safety issues. It only takes an incident over a longer period to have such a big impact. That is something that we are not considering nearly enough—the additional risk that this number of flights brings, over this population.
Q268 Ronnie Cowan: What would it take to satisfy you?
Councillor Hodgins: Currently, it is expansion at Gatwick, not at Heathrow. Expansion at Gatwick is a better option.
Q269 Ronnie Cowan: But in terms of the feasibility of flights flying into Heathrow, what would you like to see?
Councillor Hodgins: Our position is that, at the moment, Heathrow is there and it serves our residents. Many people depend on it and we want a strong Heathrow. We just do not want an expanded Heathrow. We do not want an expansion of flights as they are. The number that exists at the moment is the one we have grown to and that we depend on. We do not want an increase in those flights.
Q270 Chair: I think we are fairly clear on your position. Mr Walsh, did you have something to add on safety and feasibility?
Brendon Walsh: I wanted to challenge the point about the benefits at Gatwick being similar to Heathrow. To my mind, that is not correct, as is proved by the original Davies report, which indicates that Heathrow provides a better benefit.
In terms of noise, those who live closest to the airport have less concern about the noise because they tend to work at the airport, so they are prepared to take that as a compromise. That is the truth of it. However, it is very important that the airspace changes are understood. I agree with Paul that the way flights are managed at the moment appears to be haphazard, potentially, and it is better to get it right and make sure that we have resilience.
Q271 Chair: Do you think there is enough consideration in the NPS of the airspace changes required?
Brendon Walsh: The separate exercise that is now being undertaken to plan for the future in terms of airspace use is appropriate. While it is unfortunate that it causes lack of clarity for residents about where flights will be across the airspace, it is appropriate to do that piece of work.
Q272 Ronnie Cowan: Is it fair to say that the people who live closest to the airport may be more prepared to put up and shut up because their jobs rely on working at the airport? Is it not a bit like people working in the coalmines living close to the coalface, despite the fact that the air was polluted?
Brendon Walsh: The truth of it is that, on the ground, a lot of people live close to the airport because their employment depends on it.
Q273 Ronnie Cowan: But we should still be concerned about the air and noise quality.
Brendon Walsh: Absolutely. I am not disputing that.
Councillor Hodgins: I represent Hillingdon, which is where Heathrow sits, and they are against it. Of course, you have a range of opinion, but, overall, many who are close to it are certainly not in favour of further expansion.
Brendon Walsh: But the reality is that the flightpath means that Hounslow and Slough are the two places that are most affected.
Val Shawcross: Of course, it is important for employment, and we all fly. Heathrow is important, and we want to see it retained and improved rather than expanded, but scientific studies show that, whether or not you voice your concerns about noise nuisance, there are measurable cardiovascular impacts and other health impacts, including stroke and coronary disease, of noise nuisance on your physiology. That is factually demonstrated by scientists.
We are potentially looking at 1 million people, so there is a huge health impact. It seems totally unfair that the NPS does not even include a requirement that the final flightpaths that would be deployed and used in any way reflect the indicative flightpaths used during the whole process. That is one area where the community would have an absolute right to expect some certainty that what they were told was actually coming to pass.
Chair: We would like to go on to issues around mitigation, particularly noise envelopes and periods of respite.
Q274 Ronnie Cowan: This question is for Brendon and Paul. Noise envelopes and periods of respite have been endorsed by Government to mitigate the noise impacts on residents. I can see the answer to this coming my way. Is there enough detail in the NPS to understand whether such measures will be effective in practice?
Councillor Hodgins: No. From the discussion we have had, we do not have certainty on it. The way it is modelled is based on average noise, but the way people are impacted by it is not on an average basis, and those averages take into account the quiet times as well. It is not a sufficient reflection of the impact.
Brendon Walsh: It is really important that there is no opportunity for creep on the night-time flightpath. That needs to be legislated in such a way that there can be no opportunity for people not to have six and a half hours’ respite at night.
Q275 Ronnie Cowan: Do the measures need to be more tightly defined?
Brendon Walsh: It is very straightforward. If Heathrow is to succeed with the third runway application, the DCO needs a ban put into it so that it cannot be brought back as an opportunity.
Val Shawcross: There has already been some creep in the paperwork. The night period, as recognised by the Government in their consultation document on night flights, in January 2017, stipulated an eight-hour period, from 11 until seven. The NPS proposal is a six-and-a-half-hour period. That night period is already being pressed on during this process. It is a really important thing for people to have some respite. Flights already arrive early, for technical reasons, from the far east, and it is not uncommon for people in south London, a long way away, to be woken up by flights at 6 am and 5.30 am, because planes come in and are in stacks. This is a really important area that is not being taken seriously enough in the process.
Chair: I am sure it is something we will come back to with our second panel this afternoon.
We recognise that one of the potential benefits of Heathrow expansion is the creation of jobs, but potentially that creates extra pressures, particularly on housing. Martin will follow up on those points.
Q276 Martin Vickers: As you have made clear, Chair, the expansion of Heathrow will have very far-reaching impacts, way beyond what is described as the red-line boundary. Mr Walsh and Councillor Hodgins, can you elaborate on what the specific impacts might be?
Councillor Hodgins: In terms of the impact on jobs, I again come back to the point that it is not Heathrow or nothing. It is about the alternatives. If you expand Gatwick, you will get jobs there as well.
In terms of the local pressures on housing, remember that at Heathrow it assumes that there will be demolition of existing houses, and those need to be replaced. There would be incredible pressure in that area both during the time and afterwards on local infrastructure and housing. We can get those benefits, which would be easier to manage, with the alternative at Gatwick.
Brendon Walsh: As I mentioned before on spreading the benefits, we are back to where we started in terms of southern and western rail access. The further that people can travel into the airport, the better.
There are some challenges to the development community in terms of clever design, where we make the best use of land that is available. I am working with a company that is looking at providing housing solutions above employment space. That is the way for the future.
Joseph Carter: One of the issues, particularly from the HSPG point of view, is looking at a joint spatial planning framework for the area. There are a lot of complex issues related to housing, jobs, employment and skills in the whole piece. We are fairly well placed at the moment to pull together with the local authorities that work with us to look at how we might bring forward a joint spatial planning framework to address a lot of those issues, particularly if expansion is approved.
Q277 Chair: Do you think the wider impacts on community facilities and housing are adequately or inadequately addressed in the NPS?
Joseph Carter: Currently, I do not think they are adequately addressed, but they could be addressed fairly readily by groups tasked with looking at them. We would be happy to start that work.
Alex Williams: I said earlier that the expansion creates an extra 135,000 trips on the network, and whether it is public transport or the highway network is an issue to be resolved. That puts a huge amount of pressure on those networks. Our concern is whether that pressure, without adequate extra infrastructure, will stifle growth.
We have tracked average traffic speeds. They will probably fall between 4% and 5% in the adjacent boroughs. That added congestion on the road network could stifle growth. The lack of availability of any public transport capacity will also stifle growth; people will choose to invest elsewhere because they can move around more efficiently. Our concern is that the scale of increasing demand, whether on public transport or the road network—135,000 trips every single day—will have the potential effect of stifling growth.
Brendon Walsh: This a small but important point. Planning for construction workers at Heathrow, should it be given planning permission, is important. HSPG went to Hinckley Point to have a look at how that project had been delivered. It was quite apparent that not enough planning had been done in that situation. A lot of the local accommodation was taken by construction workers. A better way would be to plan and build accommodation, learning from the experience of the Olympics. Housing that was provided for construction workers could then be used for people who come to work at the airport.
Q278 Martin Vickers: To end with a united approach from all of you, the NPS needs more detail.
Councillor Hodgins: Much more detail.
Val Shawcross: And some commitments.
Councillor Hodgins: It needs to be seen in the context of the overall London plan for some of the things we were talking about, such as infrastructure investment.
Chair: If there are no further questions, I thank our first panel. That concludes our questions to you, so you are free to go.
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Mr Dhanda, John Stewart and Stephen Clark.
Q279 Chair: Welcome and thank you for coming along today. For the record of our proceedings, would you introduce yourselves?
John Stewart: My name is John Stewart. I chair HACAN, which is the organisation that gives a voice to residents under the Heathrow flightpaths.
Mr Dhanda: I am Parmjit Dhanda, the executive director of Back Heathrow, which represents 105,000 local people who live in the area.
Stephen Clark: I am Stephen Clark. I represent the No 3rd Runway Coalition, which includes people living under flightpaths, both arrivals and departures, and the villages around Heathrow. Within the coalition, we have five local authorities, seven MPs, four environmental organisations and 12 community organisations.
Q280 Chair: Thank you very much. The northwest runway has been endorsed primarily on economic grounds. I appreciate that not everyone will agree with that, but it would clearly have significant impacts in that respect. It would also have considerable social, environmental and health impacts. Do you think enough has been done to assess and explain the balance of impacts that would arise from the scheme?
John Stewart: No, I am not sure that it has. There has been work done on the economic advantages of Heathrow, of Gatwick and of the Heathrow hub. Clearly, if you are going to build any sort of infrastructure of that size, there will be economic benefits.
The noise, air pollution and climate change aspects have been explained, but I am not sure that they have been fully costed. There has been some work done, but I do not think we have a proper, full cost-benefit analysis of the third runway. My feeling is that that work needs to be done in a bit more detail than it has been right now, before any decision is taken as to which scheme to proceed with.
Mr Dhanda: There is obviously a lot of information out there, and you have to be able to disseminate it. Have we engaged people well enough in the process? I would suggest that there is always more work to be done when working in diverse areas. There are very many diverse groups that I do not think have been heard, certainly in the past, in this debate. It is one of the things we have tried to put right in Back Heathrow.
As you mentioned, Chair, a key driver is employment. There are 76,000 employed within the perimeter of Heathrow at present. This project would create another 77,000 jobs in the locality and 180,000 for the nation. One of the key messages that I get back from our supporters and the people I represent, who predominantly live in the local boroughs, is, “Look, the jobs matter to us and these apprenticeships are absolutely key.” There will be 10,000 apprenticeships by 2030. But they are not daft. They read the paperwork. They understand the Airports Commission. They understand the NPS. What is being said to them about air quality and noise, and the commitments that are being made, is positive. It is just a case of making sure that we hold the airport to account, and that we end up with expansion of jobs but also with a quieter airport, which is possible, and one that actually meets EU air quality standards as well. That is part of the commitment before the DCO is released.
Q281 Chair: In your view, local residents understand the balance, both of the advantages and perhaps disadvantages.
Mr Dhanda: I think they are increasingly engaged. We have seen that through the responses to the Airports Commission. We see it as part of our role. As I said, we have over 100,000 supporters. Over 50,000 of our supporters engaged with and responded to the Airports Commission. The Airports Commission had over 80% support for the northwest runway at Heathrow. Likewise, in the consultation that you have already had on NPS1, there was really good turnout and engagement from our supporters. They ask a lot of questions. We get out and listen to them in the community. We have a lot of meetings. All in all, it has been a good process, but they are very frustrated that they have seen these processes and the news over many years, but little seems to happen in terms of delivering output.
Q282 Chair: Are you surprised by the amount of support there is, given that you have heard from the previous panel significant concerns about it becoming noisier and more congested, and the quality of air being reduced, with long-term health impacts? Are you surprised that the local community is willing to accept those in exchange for the changes?
Mr Dhanda: I am probably almost unique as somebody who grew up in that locality and under that flightpath. I grew up in Hayes. I have spent the vast majority of my life in the area. Like so many people who live there, I grew up listening to the aircraft in our back garden in the 1970s. I am aware of how things have changed in that period of time. Capacity has already doubled. It doubled from the 1970s to now, yet noise has decreased tenfold in that period. I understand the concerns there will be among people who have not been affected by noise before, but you have to dig a bit deeper. Even in the last quarter of last year, when there were 20,000 complaints about noise in the area, two thirds of those came from 20 people.
Stephen Clark: I take a completely different view, perhaps unsurprisingly. The way I would sum it up is, have the environmental impacts been taken into account? You have a very flawed evidence base. I can give you reasons, but on the noise issue in particular it is the case that the whole of the Airports Commission work, and now the NPS, was predicated on assumptions regarding fleet transition. It is completely speculative and a huge gamble on the future.
The issue is that there will be more flight movements, and by 2026-28 the airport will be full. There will not be time for fleet transition, yet we are told that the noise costs are coming down. That can only really be achieved by the way the analysis has been undertaken; it is not underpinned by any specific independent health study. There is a lack of independence in the way this has been looked at throughout. It has been led by the DFT, but working closely with the CAA, and they are both very close to the industry. That is a particular issue that needs to be looked at.
At the moment, the airport itself costs a huge amount of money in DALYs—disability adjusted life years. In fact, that amounts at the moment to about £400 million a year, which over a 60-year life is £24 billion. All the NPS does is to look at the changes in the DALYs. It does not recognise the full cost of the airport. I do not think the work has been done properly at all.
Chair: We will be exploring those questions further.
Q283 Ronnie Cowan: I am a bit surprised by Mr Dhanda’s response. The Department for Transport health impact analysis supporting the NPS found that the NWR scheme would have major adverse health effects on selected “children and young people” and “people living in areas with poor health status.” Did they get it wrong?
Mr Dhanda: Are you talking about the Airports Commission? Was it one of the submissions?
Q284 Ronnie Cowan: I am talking about air quality and the Department for Transport health impact analysis, which said that there would be a major adverse health effect on “selected children and young people.” Are they wrong in saying that?
Mr Dhanda: Ronnie, it’s the same air in my lungs and I share those concerns. If there are data and statistics that say that air quality needs to be improved, I believe that it does need to be improved. You are right, but we also have to ask ourselves what the causes are. It is not just aviation. The biggest issue in the area has been road traffic.
What do we do about that? I think the Mayor is quite right to make his changes around diesel, for example, and reduce NOx. We have also seen some reductions of NOx in recent years around the area and the locality. I am sure that there is more to be done. That could be by looking at a different way of how we challenge emissions in the area. I understand that one of the plans is to be able to bring in a lower emission zone around Heathrow come 2025.
I do not think we should forget that we are moving into new territory with aircraft that have been created. They are cleaner and quieter than they have ever been before. I do not believe that all of this is down to aviation.
Q285 Ronnie Cowan: I get all that, but I put myself in the position that I had bought a house within that area and you were planning to do this where I lived. I would ask myself this question. If you can give me a guarantee and show me the plan that says, “We’re going to reduce diesel and NO2 and that’s what we’re working towards,” that is one thing. But if you say, “We know it’s out there somewhere and it may be feasible or possible,” you can walk away from it, and I am still living in that house underneath the flightpath.
Mr Dhanda: Yes, it is important to have a plan. There is a plethora of things that need to be done.
Q286 Ronnie Cowan: But I do not see a plan. I do not even know what the flightpath is going to be yet. Where is the plan?
Mr Dhanda: The flightpath is a separate question, but an interesting one. That consultation begins on Wednesday. I understand that view. Wouldn’t it be ideal to know what all the flightpaths were going to be? This is not a Heathrow thing. It is a London thing. It is a south-east thing. It is a national thing. These flightpaths get reviewed every few years. It is actually a European thing as well.
What do we do? Do we say that the flightpaths are going to be created and it will affect a different group of people, so we will start all over again at a later stage? That is the option we have. Do we get on as best we can and consult and listen to local communities about the best processes and what we can do with those flightpaths? There is no point in pretending that there will not be new challenges around those flightpaths.
If you look at the facts and how capacity has increased, a lot has happened since the days of the Wright brothers. I mentioned that since the 1970s we have had a doubling of capacity. We have had cleaner and quieter aircraft over that period of time.
Q287 Chair: The concern is that the Government’s analysis makes a number of assumptions about quieter aircraft and other mitigation measures around surface access, but the DFT’s own health impact analysis supporting the NPS recognises, and says, that certain people will have very significant health impacts, and some will have moderately adverse health impacts. It is quite hard to marry that with what you are saying about residents’ support.
Mr Dhanda: I entirely agree, but people will decide on the basis of many things, including whether employment and income gives them a better quality of life than not having those opportunities in life. I know people among our supporters who work at the airport. I was speaking to the Rosario family the other day. They moved to Cranford Cross because they wanted to be closer to the airport and their jobs.
Yes, it is important that we get the balance right and do everything that we can to reduce emissions as well, but that is not wholly down to aviation. It is also about what we need to do with road traffic.
Chair: The jobs impact will be one of the main reasons for people supporting expansion, because of the opportunities it provides. Iain is going to pick up that issue.
Q288 Iain Stewart: Mr Dhanda, earlier you referred to a doubling of employment directly connected with the airport and a further 180,000 jobs indirectly, with an expanded Heathrow. No one is doubting that there will be job creation with an expanded Heathrow, but has any displacement analysis been done to see which of those jobs will be relocated from elsewhere in the country?
Mr Dhanda: I would not be involved in that myself. I do not work for Heathrow. I am from Back Heathrow. I know that an awful lot of work has gone on with Lord Blunkett’s skills taskforce. I have also seen at the local skills academy that they are trying to reach out to local people who are harder to reach in terms of getting into local employment. We have a real issue in the locality around NEETS. There are thousands of people not in education, employment or training. It is a real opportunity to give those people opportunities and get them into work.
We have talked a lot about surface access. The journey time with Crossrail to somewhere like Tower Hamlets will be 39 minutes. That gives people the opportunity to come in and leave the area. There are real opportunities to grow employment among the local community. That is what we have to look to do.
Q289 Iain Stewart: No one is doubting that there would be a huge employment and training boost in the locality if Heathrow was to expand in the way we envisage. I come back to your figure of 180,000 jobs indirectly created. Is that a gross figure, or does it net off displacement jobs that would move to this part of London from elsewhere as a result of Heathrow expansion?
Mr Dhanda: Forgive me, I have misled you.
Q290 Iain Stewart: Do you know if that work has been done?
Mr Dhanda: The 180,000 figure is actually a national figure, including benefits to regional airports; 77,000 is the local figure.
Q291 Iain Stewart: I am still not clear whether it is a net or a gross figure.
John Stewart: Your question is about displacement, and the work has not been done. In fact, I think the national policy statement itself acknowledges that. It says: “These jobs are not necessarily additional at the national level, as some jobs may have been displaced from other airports or other sectors. The department has not quantified the impact of the shortlisted schemes on national jobs.” They have not looked at which jobs will be newly created and which jobs will be relocated.
Certainly, our view is that, before any decision is made, that fundamental work needs to be done. It is not easy to do that work, because you have to make predictions about future employment, but we need more than we have right now. From the figures being talked about, it is very unclear whether they are new jobs, displacement jobs or whatever.
Q292 Daniel Zeichner: Following on from jobs, inevitably if there are going to be more jobs, there will need to be somewhere for those workers to live. There is an estimate of something like 500 additional homes per local authority per year around Heathrow. Do any of you have a view as to how likely it is that those local authorities will be able to accommodate that extra housing?
John Stewart: The local authorities have said to us that they will struggle. I know Heathrow make the point that they believe that a lot of jobs will be created locally. They also make the point, as we heard in the last session, that, if they have good public transport from further afield, people can live in the likes of Southampton, or what have you, and work at Heathrow. Those things would reduce the need for new housing around Heathrow, but, even allowing for that, the local authorities are concerned about the pressures on land. We heard from one of the speakers in the last session that there will be conflicting pressures on land from housing and development, be it freight development or what have you.
Again, this has not been nailed down. We just do not know what sort of housing would be needed, how much land would be needed and what resources would be there, or if the local authorities could cope. Until that is nailed down, it is very difficult for a Government to make a real decision about whether the third runway at Heathrow is the right place, because they will not know the consequences for housing and land.
Stephen Clark: Obviously, trying to accommodate 500 houses a year is going to be a task for the local authorities to do, but a lot of the land—my background is in property—is, essentially, going to be blighted. The ICAO talks about land use planning and separation of uses. This is going to reduce the land supply. It raises in my mind the question as to why you should be building an airport the size of Gatwick or Frankfurt in the centre of an established residential area. It is not just a question of finding the additional 500 houses. It is a question of saying, “Why are you doing something that probably would not be done in the majority of other countries?”
Q293 Daniel Zeichner: I understand that point. Following on from that, most of us would assume that, if there is more pressure, there is a likelihood that it will force prices up still further. Is that the conclusion you would come to?
Stephen Clark: It depends where you are. If you are under a concentrated flightpath, houses could be subject to a lot of depressed house prices. We had trials in 2014 of concentrated flightpaths and they had to be abandoned early. Those are not habitable conditions at all.
Obviously, the more you suck growth into the west of London and the south-east, the more you overheat the local economy and create an excess of demand over supply. Yes, you are correct in the broader sense, but there are people who will be very badly disadvantaged.
Q294 Daniel Zeichner: Parmjit, earlier you mentioned apprenticeships being one of the big pluses. It will be pretty tough for those apprentices to afford to live in the area, won’t it?
Mr Dhanda: Yes. We are already finding, if we are honest, that there are real benefits to projects like Crossrail, but at the same time it heats up the prices of local homes. That happens wherever it is in London.
One of the things we are very keen to see is for the NPS to press the surface access issues. It was said in the previous session as well. That will create more workforce mobility. Western and southern rail will become key to that, so I hope it can happen. I encourage the Committee to think seriously about what more can be done in the NPS around that.
It was interesting to hear what HSPG said. They certainly said that there would be challenges around housing, but that they could do more if they worked tightly together. I know that in other parts of London—for example, around the Olympic Park at the time of the Olympic Games—by acting imaginatively, housing associations were able to create not just more housing but affordable housing.
Q295 Chair: I have a quick follow-up question about the number of apprenticeships that are likely to be created. I have the figure of 5,000 in my head, but I think you used the figure of 10,000. Could you clarify that for me?
Mr Dhanda: It is 10,000 in entirety. Some are already under way, so it is an additional 5,000 by 2030.
Chair: Thank you very much. Earlier, we touched on the issue of flightpaths. Paul is going to pick up on that.
Q296 Paul Girvan: I mentioned it in the previous session. The Airports Commission used several flightpath scenarios in its analysis of an expanded Heathrow’s noise impacts. It appears that the Department has estimated the noise on the single scenario of a concentrated flightpath. Stephen and John, is that the right approach to take? What are the community preferences regarding dispersed and concentrated flightpaths? Is there a risk that we are understating the true noise impact on communities by taking this approach?
John Stewart: I think there is a risk. From the HACAN perspective, we are very keen that flightpaths are not concentrated over particular communities all the time. For most communities, the big issue is how many planes go over their homes during the course of a day. In some communities, that is perhaps the only issue.
In the forthcoming consultation, which starts on Wednesday, we will be arguing quite strongly that although the new technology coming in will concentrate flightpaths, if that is going to happen, we believe there should be a number of flightpaths so that during the course of the day those flightpaths can be rotated and every community can get an element of respite. Whether there is a third runway or a two-runway airport, the element of respite and doing away with all-day flying is absolutely critical. Heathrow have some sympathy with that viewpoint. I believe they are about to publish a study into what meaningful respite would look like.
If respite is to be central—the Airports Commission endorses it as an important principle—you are absolutely right that, when looking at the noise impact in total on communities, we need to look at the noise impact not just of pure concentration but in a scenario where there are multiple flightpaths providing respite for people. I do not believe that work has been done.
Stephen Clark: I emphasise John’s points and agree with them. There is a lack of flightpath information. We can talk about respite later. They have only looked at the minimised total. Heathrow and the DFT have confirmed to me that they have given a commitment to look at a range of flightpath scenarios.
We wrote a freedom of information request to find out the background to the decision to end up eventually with just a single series of flightpaths in the NPS that represents the minimum number. That indicated that the original instruction was to look at the Airports Commission scenarios. That is the first point. The second thing—I have given you a copy of the CAA’s response—is that it was against their advice that only one scenario was addressed in the NPS.
I do not think they have given you a realistic scenario. It is not only that we do not know about the flightpaths; we do not know about their impact, because the analysis you have been given is incomplete. They are not using the DFT’s approved new ways of looking at flightpath changes. There are things like noise events or single mode. The 51 decibel contour is not shown. We have seen from freedom of information that the CAA advised against showing a map with the 51 decibels—the lower one—which is now referred to in the new guidance. Not enough is known about this and not enough is being shown to the public.
Q297 Paul Girvan: Let me expand on that point. We know that the runways are going to be in a fixed position, so there has to be concentration at those points. There is going to be a definite concentration or an increase in frequency at two areas. There is a lack of flexibility associated with that. Has that not coloured the view that there is no way other than to have a concentrated point, because that is the way it is going to be, and therefore it blights everything under that flightpath?
John Stewart: You are absolutely right. As planes approach the final flightpath, they have to be concentrated to be in line with the runway. At the moment with two runways, as you know, planes switch flightpaths at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, particularly to give people on that final approach a half-day break. The proposal for the third runway is that everybody under the one, two or three runway flightpaths would get a break, but it would only be a third of a day rather than half a day. People would get some sort of respite.
Our feeling is that we would want air traffic control to look more imaginatively at this. I was sitting in the session when you had Jock Lowe here from Heathrow Hub. I think he was talking about flightpaths that could curve in quite late on, to pick up your point. Certainly as we look forward on flightpaths in this consultation, we would like air traffic control and others to look at it as creatively as possible, whether they are straight-in flightpaths, curved flightpaths or whatever, to provide the maximum amount of respite.
Q298 Chair: Is it about respite rather than dispersed versus concentrated?
John Stewart: My view is that with the new technology coming in— performance-based navigation—they are creating concentrated flightpaths. They are precision-guided aeroplanes. A number of people in the industry do not believe that dispersal is terribly possible in this new situation. They say that there will be precision flightpaths. There will be concentrated flightpaths. If that is the situation, we would say there should be a number of those precision flightpaths, whether they are curved, straight in or what have you, so that people get as much respite as possible.
Q299 Chair: A different scenario from that modelled in the NPS.
John Stewart: It is a bit different; that is one of the key points. I am sure that Heathrow will argue, probably correctly, that, after the current consultation that they are about to start, a bit later on they will model the impact of the various scenarios and so on. But it has not been done at this stage, and it almost certainly will not be done before Parliament takes a final decision.
Stephen Clark: I have produced a plan from the Airports Commission’s work showing you what the different scenarios could be. They are markedly different. The note from the CAA under the freedom of information request states that the industry does not support those flightpaths any more, so we are a bit in the dark about it.
You talked in the previous session about when we will know about flightpaths. Heathrow are saying that they will not be sorted out this side of a development consent order. They want to have the thing up and done, and essentially decided, before they consider flightpaths. The reason for that could be that there will be a huge outburst from the public when they find out what is entailed.
John is right that you need some concentration in order to get respite. We do not know whether that is technically feasible. We also do not know what the health impacts are of living under a concentrated flightpath. We are going into the unknown, but what we are doing is irreversible. Once this NPS goes through, and the development consent order is granted and the third runway is there, it does not matter what conditions you set; £17 billion will have been spent, there will be almost an additional airport in London and it will be an irreversible process. This is something that the European environmental regulations say you should have regard to. It is taking a huge gamble. This whole thing is predicated on flightpaths we do not know and a fleet transition that cannot be proven.
Q300 Paul Girvan: Should the flightpaths be subject to a technical and safety feasibility study? I know there is community consultation. My understanding is that there has been a relatively recent consultation ongoing with the local communities—I do not know whether that was within the last day or so—but that has not necessarily been portrayed as where it is coming from. Who is conducting and putting forward the consultation that is currently out with the local communities?
John Stewart: It is starting this Wednesday. It is a Heathrow consultation on flightpaths. They are consulting on the design principles that should inform new flightpaths. Clearly, because this is being done before a third runway has been given approval, the design principle is whether it is a two-runway airport or a three-runway airport. As you probably know, in common with all the other airports in the country, Heathrow will need to redesign its flightpaths because of new technology coming in. They are asking about the design principles, and we would say that is a good question. We want to get involved in helping to scope the principles of new flightpaths.
Q301 Chair: Is it your contention that that should have been done before the NPS?
John Stewart: Exactly, Chair. The problem is the timing. The result of this cannot be factored into the national policy statement. It cannot be factored in before Parliament takes a vote on whatever scheme they want to go ahead with later this year.
Chair: We come to questions on the technical way in which noise has been estimated.
Q302 Ronnie Cowan: The Department has relied almost entirely on its method of averaging to estimate the impact on communities from noise. What are your views on this, John and Stephen?
John Stewart: Our members do not hear average noise. I accept that averaging noise is what is done right across Europe and the world. You need some common way of doing things, and I understand that.
What we have argued for some time, what Davies recommended and what the NPS is talking about is that, in addition to the averaging, we should also have the numbers. When you are looking at the impacts on a community, it is not just how many people live within the 54-decibel range averaged over the day. For example, you could have N60; how many planes go overhead at 60 decibels or more? We believe that a suite of metrics—a whole number of metrics—should be used rather than just relying exclusively on the averaging.
Stephen Clark: The question about noise averaging uses the periods when you are not being overflown to bring down the average. It masks the impact. That is the way averages work. It is against World Health Organisation advice, which has been out since 1999, so it is not something new.
I referred to the Sydney airport experience in my brief of evidence. I am afraid I did it more than once, but I think it is important to try to learn from that experience. They felt that it was a deception to use the average metrics. That came out very strongly from the Australian Senate Select Committee.
One of the best illustrations of that is in this plan, which I included and I have here. I do not think you have necessarily all seen it. It is a complaints map. The black line is where the 54 Leq average metric is. The purple and red dots are where the complaints are. They come from all over London. John will talk about the problems in south-east London. They are well outside the 54 Leq. It also shows the contour of one plane—an A380. It goes miles out. It goes 30 kilometres away. These contours are being used to mask the impact.
We have maps, which I have also provided, that show the modes. It is not an overall average; it is what happens when the planes are being flown over you. In our area, we get planes over for 17 hours a day when the winds are coming from the east. That goes on all the way through the night. There are two things: we are getting absolutely hammered by noise for 17 hours, and it gets worse between 10 and 11 o’clock. I have worked with Anderson, who are noise consultants to Heathrow. We are getting 62 decibels. Although we are outside these contours, within that hour, we get 62 average Leq. That means 17 to 19 planes an hour generating between 70 and 90 decibels.
Q303 Chair: Am I right in thinking that that is not taken into account because of the average, and it is only applied to a number of days of the year?
Stephen Clark: Precisely.
John Stewart: That is right. Just to re-emphasise, the key thing for communities is the number of planes going overhead during the course of a day. The average figure gives some indication of that. I do not want to knock it altogether, because it clearly gives some indication, but, actually, unless you count the number of planes going over, in my view you are missing the more meaningful metric.
Q304 Ronnie Cowan: But there is an indication that future fleets could be quieter.
John Stewart: Yes.
Stephen Clark: They could be, but that really has to be examined. How could the Airports Commission have got it so wrong? If they had not got it so wrong, perhaps we would not be here. They changed their forecast of the numbers of traffic movements. In order to accommodate the traffic movements for the economic case, they have done almost a sensitivity analysis to show that the noise impacts can somehow get better.
The thing you have to bear in mind is that the time when this proposal will be judged is 2026-28. Nobody is going to be interested in theoretical improvements that might happen in 2050. This really needs to be judged now, but a heroic gamble is being taken on a quieter fleet. Some of these changes are not happening. It is too detailed to go into here, but we have examples. We can write to the Committee. The new generation A380s are not being ordered at the moment. There are other new types of quieter planes where production has been scaled right back. This is a huge gamble and it has not been properly investigated.
John Stewart: You are right that planes have got a bit quieter, and they will get quieter. There is a problem though with the averaging out. When the planes are averaged out, you take how noisy each plane is and how many planes are going overhead during the course of a 16-hour day. In our view, too much weight is given in the modelling to the quietness or the noisiness of the plane, and not enough weight to the number of planes.
For example, about 15 years ago we did a study. It showed that, in the way they averaged the noise, over a two-hour period one Concorde going over followed by two hours of quietness was the same, when averaged, as a 757 aeroplane going over every two minutes. If you asked most people whether they would prefer one very noisy Concorde once every two hours or a jet going overhead every two minutes, they would probably go for Concorde. But whether they would or not, the point is that too much weight is given to the noise of the plane and not enough to the number of planes. To me, that seems a fundamental problem with the modelling as used right now in arriving at the averages.
Stephen Clark: On average, John, when we are on an easterly, we are getting 17 planes an hour late at night when people are trying to get to sleep. They are all generating 70 to 90 decibels. The averages do not reflect our lives at all. We do not know when this is going to come. It can come three weeks in a row or we can go three weeks without planes, but, if you have children at school or you have to get up early to try to get to work, it is going to destroy family life. We have seen the changes, and because we are getting bigger planes, they are making more noise. It is making people’s lives hell at the moment.
Q305 Chair: Obviously, there have been big improvements in aircraft design and in the way approaches are done. Parmjit, you wanted to comment.
Mr Dhanda: Yes, very briefly. I will not try to compete with these guys on in-depth knowledge around noise contours and the like. It is good that they are both on the Heathrow Community Noise Forum. One thing we are all agreed on is the notion of an independent regulator on noise. We all think that is very important; likewise on air quality.
This is not in any way a criticism, because noise affects different people in different ways. I may not have lost any sleep growing up in that environment as a youngster being overflown every day, but that was just the environment I was used to. There is a corollary between the most overflown areas around the airport and where our support is strongest. Our submission has a heat map, which perhaps goes to show that people who have lived with that kind of noise, which is nuisance for some people, but normality for others, are still inclined to be supportive. That is not because they are just tolerating it. Genuinely, I have not had six and a half hours’ unbroken sleep for 12 years, but that is because I am a father and nothing to do with the fact that I live under a runway.
Q306 Chair: I suspect that noise is quite subjective.
Mr Dhanda: Exactly.
John Stewart: That is right; noise is subjective. I would not disagree with what has been said. People do react to noise in different ways. It is very subjective and there is certainly a lot of truth in what Parmjit said. If people grew up under the flightpath or have lived with it for some time, they find it easier to live with than if they come across noise for the first time. But that, of course, is the big problem for the third runway. However much respite you get, there will be a third flightpath and that will bring people who have not had noise under it for the first time. They will undoubtedly feel more affected than people who have lived with it for quite some time.
Stephen Clark: And there will be intensification, John. People in Richmond are getting eight hours’ respite at the moment. They get flights two days in every three. For half a day it is tranquil, and for half a day they get flights. Now it is proposed that they will get 12 hours of flights with far less tranquillity. It will have a massive impact, even if you are already under flights. The point I am making is that you will get intensification. There will be new people and there will be people affected by intensification. This is all going to be judged in 2028, not in 2050.
Q307 Chair: It sounds to me as if there is quite a balance to be struck between quieter aircraft and the number of flights.
John Stewart: That is right; yes.
Chair: Luke is going to pick up some of the issues on respite and predictable respite.
Q308 Luke Pollard: Some of these points may have been covered in previous questions, but I will ask them so that I have them clear in my head. The NPS claims that Heathrow will be able to offer more predictable periods for respite for nearby communities. Do we know what respite means in practice? Is it going to be different in different communities at different times?
John Stewart: It could be. We do not know yet. Heathrow have commissioned Anderson Acoustics to produce a report on what meaningful respite would look like. I was actually on the steering group for that. What we found was that very little work has been done anywhere in the world as to what meaningful respite would look like. For example, how far away does the other flightpath need to be so that it does not annoy you? This is pioneering work and we are very supportive of it.
The key thing will be not whether there will be respite and whether more communities might get respite—that will probably happen with a two-runway or a three-runway airport, because Heathrow is quite committed to the principle of respite—but how it will work in practice. Heathrow, as far as large airports are concerned, will be leading the way, and a lot of discussion will be needed, quite rightly, with air traffic control as to how creative they can be and how much respite they can give, while keeping planes in the air safely.
Stephen Clark: And what the impact is of having 12 hours’ overflight rather than eight hours’ overflight. You are going to live in an area that, at the moment, can be characterised by tranquillity on Richmond Green. You are going to move to a situation where that will not arise any more. You will have four or five hours of quietness. That has not been looked at. As John rightly pointed out, no central research has been done on it. Heathrow is doing a study through Anderson, but it is not complete and has not been proven. The average metrics that have been used to underpin this case are based on the notion that you will have respite, which will bring down averages.
Q309 Luke Pollard: Building on your points, does that mean that in the NPS we are scrutinising you would like there to be a more overt and prescriptive mention of respite in the NPS document itself? I am just trying to balance what you are after when it comes to respite.
Stephen Clark: My position is that this is an incredibly risky project for the Government to run. Rather than trying to define respite better, I am afraid I am going to say that it would be far better to forget the idea of expanding Heathrow. At the moment, this is causing 400 million DALYs a year in health impacts. There is a human cost. The idea of adding 54% additional flights and then saying, “We can ameliorate this through respite” is completely the wrong approach.
John Stewart: But, if a third runway goes ahead, I would see respite as an absolutely essential condition—perhaps the key condition. It comes back to what I was saying. For local communities, it is the number of flights going overhead. The key condition seems to me to be as creative a use of respite as possible if a third runway goes ahead.
Stephen Clark: It would be with two runways as well.
John Stewart: I would obviously like to see it with two runways as well.
Q310 Luke Pollard: Just to round that off, in terms of recommendations and where that sits within the NPS, respite is definitely something that nearly everyone supports, but it is very hard for everyone to define what it may be, if you were to make a recommendation for the NPS.
John Stewart: I think that is right. It may help a bit when Heathrow publish their respite report, which is due and, hopefully, will come out quite soon. That may help, but we are still going to struggle a bit to define in an NPS exactly what it will look like. We can define principles and possible practices, but at this stage we might struggle with anything more than that.
Mr Dhanda: Part of the problem if you start codifying anything is that you are almost pitting one group against another. Some will be beneficiaries and some will be losers. As things stand, it is not impossible that some people who have little respite at the moment will have more respite as a consequence, because you have an airport that is at 98% capacity compared with one that will not be. Night-time is a good example. Our supporters have certainly been very keen on extending the five and a half hours to six and a half hours. We are not the only ones. There are difficult trade-offs.
Stephen Clark: I want to talk about night flights for a moment, because there is something that has not come out. Obviously, it is very good if you can get a six-and-a-half-hour period, but what we should really be going for is eight hours. That is the first thing.
Under the six-and-a-half-hour night-flight ban, some communities under departures, such as Teddington or Englefield Green, could potentially be worse off. At the moment, there are no departures before 6 o’clock in the morning. There is quite a strong likelihood that the time will be brought forward to 5.30. You can see the pressure from the industry, which hates the idea of the night-flight ban in the first place, as you will see from some of the evidence submitted to you. We are very concerned about a situation where the airport will start being fully operational at 5.30. That will represent a worsening of the situation for communities who are under departures.
Q311 Chair: Could you explain that to me a little more clearly. If we recognise that a six-and-a-half-hour night-flight ban is an improvement on five and a half hours, why would some places be worse off as a result?
Stephen Clark: I will try to make it as simple as I can. At the moment, there are no scheduled departures between 11.30 and 6 o’clock. Arrivals start coming in at 4.30, so at the moment, in so far as night flights are allowed within the schedule, they occur between 4.30 and 6 o’clock, which are obviously times when airlines want to run.
Under departure routes, we do not get overflight at all at 6 o’clock in the morning. Our concern is not only that we will go down to six and a half hours, with planes coming over at 5.30, but that lots of planes will try to come into that period because of pressure from the industry, which does not want a night-flight ban at all. They will try to concentrate as many flights as possible into the shoulder hours. That is something else. When you look at an average, you have to look at where the noise causes the most damage. I am in support of the six-and-a-half-hour night-flight ban, but I am just saying that some communities will be worse off as a result.
John Stewart: My view is that six and a half is not really enough. We submitted a report in our evidence to you which we commissioned from AvGen, who are aviation consultants. That suggests that it could be possible for eight hours to be the norm for communities during the course of the year. That is not quite saying eight hours every night.
What Howard Davies recommended was a night-flight ban until 6 o’clock. That would be possible with a third runway, because it would provide the extra capacity. Some of the flights arriving before 6 o’clock now could arrive on the third runway just after 6 o’clock. In AvGen, we took that a stage further. Right now, between 6 o’clock and 7 o’clock is the busiest hour of the day, when both runways are used. If you were able to move some of the flights that currently arrive between 6 and 7 to just after 7 o’clock on the extra capacity for a third runway, you could just have one runway used between 6 and 7 o’clock. If that runway was rotated each week, depending on wind direction, it would mean that two weeks out of three, each community would get no night flights until 7 o’clock in the morning.
Our consultants felt that that was a feasible proposal. The airlines obviously will not like it, and if I was running an airline I would not like it either, because I would want my planes to arrive when they do right now. Our feeling is that it is worth looking at to see whether it is feasible. If it is, it would dramatically increase the night-flight benefits for residents under the flightpaths.
Q312 Chair: You said that you understand the position of airlines that are quite concerned about the night-flight ban. What would you say to them in that respect?
John Stewart: What I would say to them is, “Have a look at Frankfurt.” Before the fourth runway was built at Frankfurt, over an eight-hour night they had over 120 flights. One of the conditions of the fourth runway at Frankfurt was that they would have a night-flight ban. I think the night-flight ban is 11.30 to 5.00; it may be 12.00 to 5.00.
That has come in. It was challenged by Lufthansa, but since the night-flight ban came in the night flights have gone somewhere. Lufthansa has not collapsed, and the economy of Frankfurt is thriving. I would say to the airlines, “I understand your position but perhaps you’re egging the pudding just a little bit.”
Q313 Chair: Parmjit, did you want to add to the point about night flights?
Mr Dhanda: It is about viability. John makes a very interesting argument, but it has to be viable as well. He is quite right: the Davies Commission talked about six and a half hours. Is the porridge too hot or too cold? I do not know, but we are doing this against the backdrop of Brexit and the need to be able to trade. Does it mean that more opportunities would go to Schiphol? I do not know. It really has to be based on viability, but I would say it should be six and a half hours as a minimum.
Stephen Clark: We should be going for something longer. Some communities could well be worse off. This illustrates the fact that Heathrow, as a hub airport, is in the wrong place. In order to improve the country’s economy, you should be looking to distribute the traffic to other airports—for example, Manchester. We talk about sustainability and having a sustainable transport policy. Bringing all the freight into Heathrow and then putting it on lorries and taking it up to Scotland, or anywhere else in the country, on motorways that are already full means, it seems to me, that it is the wrong place to build a hub airport. It is in the middle of a city. I cannot think of any other city, certainly in Europe, which has an airport like that, let alone adding 54% more traffic.
Chair: In an ideal world, you might not start from where we are, but that is where we are. Huw wants to ask some questions about compensation.
Q314 Huw Merriman: For those residents most impacted by the blight of the third runway, Heathrow has committed to what it calls a “world-class” compensation fund of £2.6 billion. Given that you have talked about the consultation on flights, do you find that that figure is generous, tight-fisted or perhaps premature?
John Stewart: It is better than it was in previous offers, but if we look at it more closely—I think the Environmental Audit Committee asked questions about it—it emerges that some people who will be living under the flightpaths will not get the money for decades to come. Our view is that that is not satisfactory. The money needs to be available as soon as the increase in planes is there. That would be our main point. If that requires a bit more money up front than they are offering, my view is that it should be in the NPS.
Stephen Clark: I would answer that question in another way. I am a surveyor so I have done part 1 compensation claims and I worked on HS1; my firm did all the compulsory purchase on that. I would first like to talk about the communities around Heathrow that are there at the moment; 783 houses are going to be lost, and it could be over 3,700 once you start looking at the voluntary area. For those people, 125% of market value is no compensation at all. Their communities will be destroyed. John mentioned the time people will have to wait to get some of this money. Some people will be dead by the time the money comes through.
John Stewart: May I interrupt? There are two separate issues. There are people whose homes will get knocked down and there are people who will be living under the flightpaths.
Stephen Clark: I understand that. I am coming to that.
John Stewart: Sorry.
Stephen Clark: I represent the No 3rd Runway Coalition and the Heathrow villages. I know that they are very upset about this issue. They feel that they have not been listened to. This is a community that has been there for a very long time and it will have to make way. That is going to exacerbate the pressure on housing. That is the first thing.
On noise insulation and acquisition, full insulation comes in at 60 decibels on a single mode. That is a very high level of noise. Nowhere in Teddington would qualify even under a single mode. There are parts of Twickenham that might qualify under 57 decibels on a single mode. They get a £3,000 contribution. That will go nowhere near the cost of fully insulating most houses. It could cost £20,000 or £30,000 to do it.
The other thing is that, for people who are close to the airport, open market values have been depressed by years of blight, by living next to an airport. In a sense, there is a market that has generated itself. Although people have lived there for different times, you are starting from a very low point. If people have to relocate, they will not have a lot of money to replace their living environment. It is not good.
The one thing that insulation cannot do is compensate you for the loss of your garden or for the loss of parks. Some of the parks we are talking about are national assets: Richmond Park, Kew Gardens and Windsor Great Park. Noise insulation and compensation is only part of it. It is not a very material thing. We keep hearing about a world-class compensation package, but you have to remember that we are starting from a position where aviation is exempt from the laws of nuisance in our country. It is more or less allowed to do what it wants. It might be fairly generous in comparison with very little, but in my view it is not a generous package.
Q315 Huw Merriman: Are you suggesting that compensation cannot be quantified when we talk about the impact on public spaces, and so on?
Stephen Clark: Absolutely. One of the flightpath options is putting as many flights as possible—the concentrated routes—over places like Richmond Park, Bushey Park, Ham House or Windsor Great Park. Those are people’s open spaces, and amenities for Londoners. The noise contours at the moment go over or touch on Hyde Park. This is an issue, and all the local politicians, almost without exception, oppose it. This is going to have a dramatic effect on the future of London and the south-east. It is not just a question of insulation packages. It is a question of our whole environment. Do we have to sleep with our windows closed?
Mr Dhanda: What the local politicians think is an interesting point. A lot of politicians actually support this. There was a Populus poll not so long ago of 10,000 local people. If you measure support for expansion versus those against, in the 12 constituencies around Heathrow, 51% are in support and 35% are against. In 10 of those 12 constituencies, there are more in favour than against. That is a Populus poll of 10,000 people.
It is true to my own experience. If you know the locality, you will know the people. You might know Cliff Hare, who is the owner of the White Horse pub locally.
Stephen Clark: I don’t know it.
Mr Dhanda: It’s a good pub.
Stephen Clark: I’m sure it is.
Mr Dhanda: Unfortunately, it is one of those that will be CPO’d and will be lost. We get this message quite a lot and it is quite sad. He says that people have lived with an awful lot of uncertainty for very many years. He is pleased about the compensation—125% plus stamp duty and removal costs. We get calls from lots of people in the locality saying, “Can we get it now? We want to move on and get on with our lives. We are sick of living with this hanging over our heads. We have been living with it for such a long time.”
Q316 Huw Merriman: Perhaps I can come back to the red line concept. We touched on it. Obviously, the statutory requirement limits compensation for noise blight within that red line. Do you think that boundary appropriately represents the full scale of the residents who should be entitled to compensation?
Mr Dhanda: A quick answer for you, Huw. Rub it out; take it up in the NPS and make changes. We should be allowed to compensate beyond that red line. I hope Heathrow Airports Ltd does exactly that.
Huw Merriman: Thank you; that was a very succinct answer.
Q317 Chair: We have already touched on who is affected and when they can claim compensation. This question is primarily to Stephen. By law, residents can claim for loss of property value arising from the operation of the airport only after it has been operating for a year. Do you think that would prevent people from seeking proper redress prior to an expanded Heathrow becoming operational?
Stephen Clark: A lot of people would like to move out of the area once they know where the flightpaths are. We have seen this in Teddington already. Quite a few people I know are moving out. It is not very satisfactory, but it reflects the part 1 Land Compensation Act situation, where you have to allow the new operation to settle. It will not be satisfactory for a lot of people, and the level of compensation, of course, is down to the depression in the value of the property price. If you suddenly find that there is a huge demand for housing because of all those local jobs, it might be very difficult to prove that you have a depression in the value of your property under a part 1 claim.
Q318 Chair: Do you think there is potential to have a point earlier in the process at which residents can claim compensation? If so, where could it sit?
Stephen Clark: If the aviation industry decides that it wants to expand, it should be the polluter pays principle. It is quite true to say that there will be some people who live near Parmjit, and some people who live in Kew, who say that it does not worry them at all. I know others who have got used to it and others who have moved out. It is just dreadful. Not everybody is the same, which is one of the difficulties.
If the polluter is going to pay, they should recompense. It should not be the individuals who have to pay the price. If there is going to be a lot of noise, a lot of concentration, we want to plan our lives somewhere else as soon as possible, frankly. You will create what are referred to as noise sewers. That is what we are really concerned about.
At the moment, it is based on assumptions about quieter and cleaner planes, but it could be horrendous. You will usually find that most people get most upset when there is an airspace change. That is what all the research shows. The biggest reaction will be once the new flightpaths are there and the airport is open. Then there is going to be real community unhappiness about this.
I have not quite answered your question, I am afraid, about when. It is almost a blight situation. If there is a concentrated zone, as is shown in the NPS now, you ought almost to be able to serve a blight notice and say, “Well, it’s not me that has created the problem. I moved into this area in the expectation of a quiet life. We were told that we weren’t going to have a third runway a few years back, and now they say they are.”
To pick up Parmjit’s point about people who have been living with uncertainty, even if you approve this NPS, it is going to be fought through the courts. That is fairly certain. There will be lots of uncertainty. Even if it gets through the courts, you still have to fund it, and that is a very big ask.
Q319 Chair: I am not sure I have clarity on the point in the process when you think compensation should be paid.
Stephen Clark: Once the flightpaths have been designated and there is some certainty about that is when you need to start considering it. You need to consider the fact that not everybody is the same. It should not be taken down to the minimum. There will be some people who cannot live in certain situations.
John Stewart: The NPS needs to be clearer about two things: the criteria for compensation and the timing. Heathrow have been fairly clear on the criteria for the Heathrow villages, whether one agrees with that or not. They are very clear what the criteria are, and there is some clarity about timing.
The problem is more around people under the flightpaths, either the existing flightpaths where there is intensification, or the new flightpaths. The criteria there are much less clear and the timing is very unclear. As I said at the beginning, and as the Environmental Audit Committee was told, it goes on for decades. It seems to me that it would really help if both those issues, criteria and timing, were clear for the Heathrow villages and for the people who live under the new flightpaths.
Q320 Chair: My final question was going to be about what safeguards need to be in place in the NPS to ensure that communities are appropriately compensated. Is there anything you need to add to what you have just said about criteria and timing?
John Stewart: Yes, there is. Safeguarding goes a bit wider than just compensation. It goes into the night flights. Some of it needs to go into primary legislation—if there is a night-flight ban of whatever length, if there is a noise envelope, however it is defined, and the whole question of ruling out a fourth runway. I know that no Government can mandate what a future Government can do, but you can make it quite difficult for a future Government if you put a lot of those things in primary legislation. It seems to me that that may be the way forward.
Q321 Chair: Parmjit, what further safeguards might residents who back Heathrow want to see within the NPS?
Mr Dhanda: There is an aspect within the NPS around promoting neutrality. My worry would be that, if you change your promoter, what about all the things we have been discussing through all these sessions, and that you have been discussing with other people around this table, and the consultations you have been having? In terms of promoting neutrality, that is really important. If you end up shifting around and finding another promoter of the scheme, to what extent can we be certain that the guarantees we have in the NPS will be passed on to a future promoter?
Stephen Clark: For everybody who gets a safeguard, usually it comes at a cost to the aviation industry one way or another. These safeguards, as John has pointed out, are going to come under pressure if this goes through. I fear that you are into an irreversible process. If you do not achieve the air quality or noise standards that are promised now, what are you going to do about it? When the airport is open, you cannot stop the operation; it becomes even more important to the local economy. My advice would be that you need to be satisfied now on these things, so that we do not get into that situation. There are huge risks associated with this project.
Chair: Thank you very much for giving evidence today. That concludes our session.