Thames airport campaigners seize lifeline

Campaigners for a new London airport on the Thames estuary seized on the lifeline thrown to them by the Airports Commission interim report to restate their arguments and address concerns the report raises.

Boris Johnson, London mayor and the most high-profile advocate of the scheme, said the decision to conduct additional research into the feasibility of a four-runway airport on the Isle of Grain was "sensible and pragmatic".

The commission did not include the Thames estuary on its shortlist of three options for expanding southeast England's aviation capacity but said it would conduct further research on the project and decide in the second half of 2014 whether to add it to the list.

The shortlist includes an additional runway at Heathrow, extending one of Heathrow's runways and building a second runway at Gatwick.

The report estimates that either of the Heathrow options to be completed by 2030 would cost up to £18bn, while the price of the Gatwick expansion would be up to £13bn.

Mr Johnson and Lord Foster, the architect of the proposed airport, both rejected the commission's £112bn estimate for its construction.

"We are ready to demonstrate to the commission that costs for our Thames Hub proposal are affordable, the transition through closing Heathrow achievable and a fear of the future unreasonable," Lord Foster said.

Mr Johnson said, without giving details, that the £112bn price tag was "far in excess of the costs experienced in many other countries that have completed similar projects, and is contrary to independent assessments of experts and private financiers". He said the commission's assumptions about the investment needed for the three shortlisted options had been "woefully underestimated".

The commission said the Isle of Grain proposals showed "great imagination and ambition" but that "the costs and risks attached to such plans are so high that they present serious challenges to the credibility of these options".

The key potential advantages of the Thames estuary proposal, the commission said, were its reduction in noise impact, contribution to local regeneration, alignment with the wider economic development of London and significant increase in hub airport capacity.

But it said the economic and regeneration benefits were hard to quantify and the proposal would present "significant challenges and risks", particularly in relation to the "substantial impact on several large areas of nationally and internationally recognised environment".

None of the Isle of Grain proposals had adequately addressed the environmental issues, the commission said, adding that even if the challenges were addressed there was doubt about whether the 2030 timescale could be met.

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Environmental campaigners have long opposed the Isle of Grain proposal. Sue Armstrong-Brown, head of policy at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, said the idea was "an environmental disaster and economic lunacy".

"The more scrutiny put on this proposal, the more clear it will be for all concerned that it is a non starter," she said.

Councils in and around the area are fiercely opposed to the Foster plan. Kent county council and Medway Council, the unitary authority for the Isle of Grain, argue it would be on the wrong side of London for most of the UK's population and would devastate the west London economy by closing down Heathrow.

Rodney Chambers, leader of Medway Council, said on Tuesday: "We still hold to our arguments that there is extra capacity in the existing airports."

Local business organisations are more circumspect. A spokesman for the South East Local Economic Partnership, which covers Kent, Essex and East Sussex, said the business community supported the idea of airports expansion - but in its most recent survey in June, a greater proportion preferred enlarging existing airports against building a new hub. Selep is to canvass its members on the issue in the wake of the interim report's publication.

Nick Rowell, policy director at the Kent Invicta Chamber of Commerce, said its members were also mixed on the Isle of Grain airport plan. The county had a high proportion of owner-managed businesses for many of whom quality of life was as important as business issues, he said. "Most people who have made a choice to live in Kent think that being in the garden of England is pretty spectacular and that the environmental issues are compelling."

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