Information Meetings on Stansted Expansion Plans

More than 40 community presentations have been lined up for the coming months by Stop Stansted Expansion (SSE) to help people get to grips with proposals for a second runway at Stansted and to explain how to lodge objections.

SSE has agreed to speak at parish and town council meetings across Essex, Hertfordshire and Suffolk as part of its drive to alert local communities to the threat posed by BAA's plans, with more dates being added all the time.

Development on the scale being proposed by BAA would have far-reaching effects across the region both during the four year construction phase - which would make Stansted the biggest building site in Europe - and when fully operational.

Each meeting will feature a speaker from the SSE team, including Chairman Peter Sanders and other members of SSE's executive committee. They will draw on the airport operator’s recently submitted planning application to explain how, if it were approved, Stansted could become bigger than Heathrow today in terms of flights and passengers, plus an enormous landgrab that would entail destruction of homes, heritage, countryside and ancient woodland.

Advice will be given to those wanting to lodge their views on the plans before the cut off date of 26 June set by local planning authority, Uttlesford District Council. Thereafter, the application is expected to be the subject of a ‘call in’ for public inquiry next year and different rules for expressing views will apply.

Commenting on the programme, SSE Campaign Director Carol Barbone said:

“Yet again we’re faced with a planning application from BAA which tries to pretend that the development of Stansted would have virtually no impact on the environment or on people’s quality of life. Our presentations will help reveal the true picture.”

The SSE website contains the full list of meetings that have been planned and will be kept updated to reflect additional events as they are organized - see ‘Coming Events’ at: http://www.stopstanstedexpansion.com/events.html. Further information can also be obtained by calling the campaign office on 01279 870558 or emailing info@stopstanstedexpansion.com.

Information on accessing the planning application, with advice on how to respond, is also available on the SSE website (see link to ‘Second Runway Application – Quick Links’ www.stopstanstedexpansion.com/second_runway.html).


LIST OF MEETINGS

The meetings at which SSE will speak are largely parish and town council meetings open to the public. Details of the programme as at 8 April 2008 appear below. See website for more detail including timings and venues at: http://www.stopstanstedexpansion.com/events.html

10 April Braughing Parish Council Annual Meeting
10 April Weston Parish Council
14 April Radwinter Parish Council
16 April Birchanger Parish Council
17 April Saffron Walden Town Council - Public Meeting on Airspace Proposals
23 April Rushden and Wallington Parish Council
28 April Helions Bumpstead Parish Council
1 May Henham with Elsenham Parish Councils
8 May Hormead Parish Council
10 May Ashen Parish Council (near Sudbury)
12 May Epping Upland Parish Council
12 May High Roding Parish Council Annual Assembly
12 May Hadstock Parish Council
13 May Great Canfield Parish Council
14 May Hatfield Heath Annual Parish Meeting
15 May Redbourn Parish Council
19 May Little Bardfield Parish Council
20 May Chrishall Parish Council
21 May Sible Hedingham Public Meeting for c10 neighbouring parishes
21 May Ickleton Parish Council
22 May Chantry Community Association
2 June Brickendon Parish Council
4 June St Paul's Walden Parish Council
4 June Saffron Walden Town Council
9 June Sawbridgeworth Town Council
10 June Woolmer Green Parish Council
12 June Nazeing Parish Council
16 June Hertford Town Council
18 June Broomfield Parish Council
25 June Sheering Parish Council
26 June Great Easton (with Broxted) Parish Council
3 July Widdington Parish Council
7 July Stapleford Abbots Parish Council
8 July Willingale Parish Council
17 July Good Easter Parish Council
17 July Stanstead Abbotts Parish Council
31 July Theydon Bois Parish Council
8 September Barnston Parish Council

The Wilderness Foundation UK encourages free debate on all aspects of development which have a potential detrimental effect on both our local and global environment. The information in this article has been supplied to us by the Stop Stansted Expansion group and is presented here to you for your own evaluation. Views and comments expressed are not necessarily those of WFUK.

Stop Stansted Expansion Update

As recently reported on our website, the Wilderness Foundation UK has pledged support to the Stop Stansted Expansion group who are working to safeguard the Essex countryside from the proposed expansion of the existing airport at Stansted, Essex. We will be featuring important information, press releases and updates on the progress of the proposal through the planning and consent stage and aim to highlight the devastating effect that such a development would have on rural Essex.

Press Release: Stop Stansted Expansion 11 March 2008

Stop Stansted Expansion (SSE) today described BAA’s planning application for a second runway as going beyond environmental vandalism and being tantamount to a declaration of war on the local community and global environment. The campaign has pledged to use every means at its disposal to defeat these plans.

If BAA's plans for a second runway at Stansted were to be approved it would be the UK's biggest airport development project since the Second World War. One thousand acres of unspoilt countryside and ancient woodlands would be bulldozed, cutting a swathe through the heritage-rich villages of Molehill Green and Broxted.

In a typically presumptuous move, BAA has submitted the application before the Government has even ruled on the outcome of last year's public inquiry where the airport operator was seeking permission for maximum use of the existing runway. The application for a second runway and associated development from BAA assumes that the Government has ruled in its favour on the expansion plans for the existing runway – a move which SSE described as yet another demonstration of the degree of collusion and connivance between BAA and the Department for Transport.

BAA claims that its plans would give Stansted a capacity of 68 million passengers a year (mppa) – three times its current throughput – but this is another cynically calculated understatement because its true capacity would be at least 85mppa. However, even at 68mppa Stansted would be bigger than Heathrow today whether measured in terms of passenger throughput, number of flights or land area.

If the plans were to be approved, the relative peace and tranquillity of many historic local towns and villages such as Thaxted, Great Dunmow, Saffron Walden and Finchingfield would be lost forever and the main local town, Bishop's Stortford, could become another Hounslow within a generation. The sheer scale of what is proposed for Stansted would mean that the impacts from overflying, road and rail congestion, air pollution and urbanization would also reach far and wide across the region. People living as far as 70 miles away in Cambridgeshire and Suffolk would suffer a worsening of overflying and face the prospect of new flight paths over previously tranquil areas.

Peter Sanders warned: "The application must serve as a rallying call not just for local people who seek to safeguard this unspoilt area of countryside but for all those who care about our legacy to future generations. This is a betrayal of a longstanding undertaking to the local community that there would never be a second runway at Stansted. We will fight BAA's plans tooth and nail in what will be a defining test of whether protection of our environment is more highly valued by the Government than still more cheap flights and doing BAA’s bidding."

In the past, a Royal Commission and two independent public inquiries and have all ruled out a second runway on environmental grounds and when the new terminal was approved in the mid-1980s the Government 'unreservedly' accepted the recommendation of the independent inspector that there should never be a second runway at Stansted.

It has always been Stansted's unique rural location, in unspoilt countryside on the border between North West Essex and East Herts, which has convinced previous public inquiries that a second runway would be wholly unacceptable from an environmental standpoint.

Today however there is also a much wider environmental consideration. The planning application comes at a time of mounting concerns over the impact of the rapid growth in flying upon climate change. A second runway at Stansted would add the annual equivalent of 11 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) to the UK's carbon footprint – wiping out the combined annual saving from switching every household in the nation to low-energy light bulbs and the entire output of all the wind turbines that have so far been built in the UK.

"The Government's hypocrisy on this issue is staggering," said Mr Sanders. "They cannot claim to be taking climate change seriously and at the same time promote a doubling of air travel and the biggest expansion in airport capacity that the UK has ever seen. Nor is there any sound economic rationale: Stansted is first and foremost a leisure airport providing cheap flights abroad and was one of the main contributors to last year's record £19.4bn UK trade deficit on international travel and tourism."

ENDS

NOTE TO EDITORS

1. When the new Stansted terminal was approved in the mid-1980s the Government gave a commitment that there would no second runway at Stansted and 'unreservedly' accepted the recommendations of the independent inspector, Graham Eyre QC:

'Any decision that expansion should take place at Stansted up to the capacity of a single runway must be entirely contingent upon securing the position that a second runway will not be constructed and that the safeguard and protection over most of the safeguarded area will cease.' – Inspector Graham Eyre QC, Report on the 1982-83 Stansted Inquiry, Chapter 50, para 9.7.

'I would not be debasing the currency if I express my judgement that the development of an airport at Stansted, with a capacity in excess of 25mppa …would constitute nothing less than a catastrophe in environmental terms.'- Ibid, Chapter 25, para.12.12.

In its 2003 Air Transport White Paper the Government overturned this commitment without justification.

2. Source references for any of the figures quoted in this release are available from SSE upon request.

3. A timeline showing the key developments associated with Stansted Airport and opposition to expansion is accessible online at http://www.stopstanstedexpansion.com/timeline.html

FURTHER INFORMATION

Carol Barbone, SSE Campaign Director: M 0777 552 3091, cbarbone@mxc.co.uk

www.stopstanstedexpansion.com

Unity Concert

Zac Goldsmith and Terry Waite to address joint Heathrow/Stansted event

Zac Goldsmith and Terry Waite will speak at a Unity Concert being staged by Stop Stansted Expansion and their opposite numbers at Heathrow this Thursday evening, 6 March, to demonstrate the unity between the two campaigns. The evening of words and English choral music is being held at the Grosvenor Chapel in Mayfair.

The concert comes just a week after the consultation into the proposals to expand Heathrow closed and shortly before the submission of a planning application for a second Stansted runway.

Full details of the event, which begins at 7.30pm, can be accessed online at http://www.stopstanstedexpansion.com/press307.html

Tickets are available from the SSE Campaign Office or on the door (Grosvenor Chapel, 24 South Audley Street, Mayfair, London W1K 2PA) at £5 each (£3.50 concessions). SSE has also organised a coach from Takeley for those wishing to use this service (seats £10 each). Contact SSE for more details.

Stop Stansted Expansion

01279 870558

info@stopstanstedexpansion.com

www.stopstanstedexpansion.com (see Coming Events)

The Wilderness Foundation UK is a member of the Stop Stansted Expansion group and is working to highlight the threat posed to wild landscapes by such developments. In conjunction with SSE, we are working towards running a number of Tranquility Walks during the Autumn, inviting our friends and members to walk in the Essex countryside and enjoy the landscape that could be potentially harmed by noise, pollution and the associated impact of the expansion of transport facilities in our home county.