Stansted pressure group attacks airport expansion go-ahead

Local council approval for BAA's plans to increase London Stansted airport's passenger capacity by two-thirds to 25 million a year has been attacked by a local pressure group as unsustainable.

The airports operator said the £250m expansion project would allow it to increase the number of flights a year by 50 per cent to 245,000 by 2010. The plans, which still await the Government's final green light, were approved late on Thursday night by Uttlesford District Council.

Norman Meade, who heads the Stop Stansted Expansion campaign, said the plans would bring local people environmental pollution and a lower quality of life. He is also general secretary of the North West Essex and East Hertfordshire Preservation Society.

Up to 2,000 households are expected to be affected by increased noise levels, up from the 1,750 households facing similar problems in 1999, BAA Stansted said. However, Terry Morgan, the airport's managing director, said he could "assure" the local community that BAA would "carry out the development in a sensitive way".

In a move designed to avoid a costly public inquiry, BAA began consultations with local community representatives and other organisations such as the Environment Agency and Friends of the Earth at the beginning of 2000, more than one year before it submitted its application for planning approval to the council.

BAA Stansted said the money saved, which could have amounted to tens of millions of pounds, would be invested in a "community fund", which it promised would "go far beyond just mitigating the environmental impact of the application". Some of the "millions of pounds" it pledged could go towards support for affordable housing, it added.

Last year Stansted handled 12.26 million passengers. The group plans to start work in 2004 on expanding the existing terminal, which was designed by Sir Norman Foster and opened in 1991. It does not intend to build a new runway as the current one was designed to serve up to 35 million passengers. Neither does it intend to ask the Government to relax night regulations, which limit the number of flights and ban or discourage the use of the noisiest aircraft.

Separately, BAA said the soaring popularity of no-frills airlines, several of which are based at Stansted, had helped to boost the number of visitors at its airports in August by 2.3 per cent to 13.2 million.