Last chance to respond to the Consultation

IMPORTANT - You have only a short time to respond to the consultation on expansion at Heathrow as your comments must be received by THURSDAY, 25TH MAY 2017.

Just some of the reasons to oppose another runway

If you have time to write to drop a note, postcard or letter to the Department for Transport and and put it in the post, send it to: Freeport, Runway Consultation. You don't even need a stamp!

If you want to complete an official response form online, it is at www.gov.uk/dft/heathrow-airport-expansion

Or you can tell the government what you think in an email: 

RunwayConsultation@dft.gsi.gov.uk

It is important that you give the Government your views as each response will be put forward and an analysis will be published, which will inform the decision makers. 

We accept that the Department for Transport has not made the process easy. It DID NOT consult our communities in advance of the consultation so, when it began in February, information was poor about DfT events. These were being held to explain what the draft Airports National Policy Statement was about and what was being proposed, If you couldn't get to an event, you had to be able to access information online. That disadvantaged many groups of people. The Government didn't appear to care. 

The Government had sent out 1.5 million leaflets to homes around the airport but the content was basically Heathrow promotion. Claims made by the airport were unchallenged, as they were in the events themselves. That was if you could find the venues. The leaflets, paid for by taxpayers, were so unhelpful that they did not include the addresses of any venues and it was evident that many areas severely affected (including areas where homes would be destroyed) had been totally ignored. 

Another flaw was that key information was missing from the consultation that many people considered essential. For example, there was NO information on new flightpaths! That meant that areas that would be newly overflown had no idea they would be affected by a third runway. How could they respond? 

Local authorities printed maps to give an idea where new flightpaths might be for R3

There was NO information explaining the terrible impact of changes to the road network. A small laminated map appeared at the Maidenhead event. If you knew what to look for, it showed a possible position of a re-routed A4 - much too late for the people who had attended the earlier event. There are also likely to be changes to the M4 and M25. 

It will be a long time before we see anything in more detail and MPs will be expected to vote on Heathrow expansion BEFORE the airport produces its detailed plans. Only then might we discover the devastation and misery that will be inflicted on innocent people who are simply trying to live their lives and look after their families. It is not their fault that they trusted the airport and numerous politicians who have repeatedly insisted that Heathrow would not be allowed to expand further. 

Negative impacts of a third runway will be felt for many miles - all for the possible benefit of a few jobs. Proposed financial benefits to the UK are estimated over 60 years!! The cost to our country will wipe out any benefit. Remember too that Heathrow is owned by foreign investors - who demand a return on their investment - while the British taxpayer will be left with a huge bill for transport infrastructure. 

NOW is the time to tell the Government what you think. DON'T BE PUT OFF BY THE OBSTACLES THE GOVERNMENT HAS PUT IN YOUR WAY. 

Your responses can be SHORT or MORE DETAILED but the Government will not know what you think unless you tell them.