Judge could stop legal challenges to a third runway
Shocking as it sounds, a single judge will decide whether ANY of the legal challenges to the government’s plan for a third runway can go ahead.
Groups opposed to the proposals are encouraging people to gather outside the Royal Courts of Justice in The Strand on Thursday 4th October at 9am to make their voices on the issue heard. It is scandalous that an examination of the plan in court could be prevented.
Plan B takes the battle to save the planet from climate change to the courts
SHE believes the third runway is undeliverable. It is in the public interest to have the project scrutinised in court.
Seating inside the court is likely to be limited
More about the five legal challenges:
Group comprised of five councils, the Mayor of London and Greenpeace Hillingdon, Wandsworth, Richmond, Hammersmith & Fulham and the Royal Borough of Windsor & Maidenhead are joined by Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, and world-renown environmental charity Greenpeace. The group is challenging Transport Secretary Chris Grayling on the grounds of air quality, climate change, noise pollution, inadequate environmental assessment, breach of the habitats directive, a flawed consultation process and transport access to Heathrow.
Heathrow Hub - This company, not part of Heathrow airport, proposed extending the existing Northern Runway at Heathrow. The idea came from former Concorde pilot Jock Lowe who has been very active in promoting his scheme. Heathrow Hub has joined with its sister company Runway Innovations Ltd to seek permission to challenge on five grounds. They believe the Department of Transport selection process that put Heathrow’s third runway plan ahead of its own was flawed and that it resulted in the most expensive, complex and disruptive expansion plan being selected.
Interestingly, they have claimed that the Secretary of State acted unlawfully in making it an effective precondition of the Heathrow Hub’s scheme that Heathrow guarantee that it would implement it. Since the Heathrow Hub’s scheme was competing with the airport’s own proposal, they argue that it breached an EU treaty.
Plan B - this charity has been established to support strategic legal action against climate change. Its challenge highlights that the Airports National Policy Statement (NPS) gives no consideration to the government’s obligations under the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.
Friends of the Earth (FoE) - The charity claims that the NPS fails to account for all the impacts of climate change on future generations, which it believes is unlawful.
Neil Spurrier - Is a lawyer who lives in Strawberry Hill, an area in the London Borough of Richmond. He is a member of the Teddington Action Group (TAG) and the Aviation Environment Federation (AEF). He is asking for the NPS to be quashed because the government did not respond adequately to the recommendations of the Transport Select Committee. The role of this committee of MPs is to provide official parliamentary scrutiny of the draft NPS.
Update: A sixth challenge by Robert Clarke, a Birmingham resident, is no longer being put forward.