The owners of Leeds Bradford Airport (LBA) are continuing their attempts to fly more planes during the night. Local people, supported by the Group for Action on Leeds Bradford Airport (GALBA), are continuing to resist those attempts.
Airport expansion is opposed by a wide range of Leeds residents who object to the resulting rise in greenhouse gas emissions and who find their sleep is constantly disrupted and their air quality polluted. Others oppose expansion because it would damage the tranquillity of the countryside around lower Wharfedale.
LBA expansion: the story so far
In 2020, LBA applied to Leeds City Council for planning permission to build a new passenger terminal and change the nighttime flying rules. This was intended to facilitate an increase in passenger numbers from four million to seven million a year. That application was granted by Leeds City Council but the decision was ‘called in’, by the secretary of state for local government, for a public inquiry. The airport’s management then decided to withdraw their application before the inquiry could even begin.
In 2022, GALBA made a complaint to Leeds City Council that the airport had exceeded the number of night flights allowed by local planning conditions. The council made its own inquiries, upheld GALBA’s complaint and issued a breach of condition notice against LBA.
Vincent Hodder, the airport’s chief exec, appeared on local television and apologised, saying that the unlawful extra flights were the result of an “error” that would not be repeated. That “error” was repeated – in 2023 and again this summer. Leeds City Council chose to take no enforcement action at all over the 2023 breach of the rules, deeming it was ‘not in the public interest’. In a couple of weeks GALBA will make another complaint to Leeds City Council because, by the end of September 2024, LBA had once again broken the night flight rules.
LBA won’t stick to the rules, so they’ve tried to rewrite them
Meanwhile in December 2023, LBA’s management submitted four new planning applications (known as CLEUDs – certificates of lawfulness of existing use of development) to Leeds City Council, in which LBA claimed that they had been breaking the night flight rules for more than 10 years. Therefore, they argued, LBA had a legal right to continue flying planes that are prohibited by local planning conditions from nighttime flying and these planes would no longer count towards the limit on the number of flights permitted at night.
So far, Leeds City Council has rejected three of those applications and has not yet made a decision on the fourth – GALBA expects it will be rejected too. The council has also issued a new enforcement notice, prohibiting LBA from flying older, noisier planes at night. LBA has stated publicly that it intends to appeal to the planning inspectorate against the CLEUD rejections but at the time of writing, no appeals have been made.
Finally, in August this year LBA announced a new plan called ‘Vision 2030’. Once again, it seeks to increase passenger numbers to seven million per year. However, another important local planning condition requires LBA to submit a new planning application in order to go beyond five million passengers per year. When/if LBA reaches four and a half million passengers a year, it must make a new planning application to the council within 12 months – which GALBA will vigorously oppose.
LBA refuses to listen to scientific advice – will the government?
Many airports in the UK, including Heathrow, want to expand their operations. This flatly contradicts the advice of the government’s climate change committee, which says there should be no expansion of UK aviation until alternative fuels are used at scale and have been proven to cut the aviation industry’s greenhouse gases to net zero.
All the independent assessments (for example Royal Society, Imperial College, Gossling & Humpe, Becken, Mackay & Lee, Cerulogy and Element Energy) agree that this will take many, many years. That’s why airports should not be allowed to expand at this time.
However, it’s likely that the new government will regard aviation as a means to achieve economic growth. So, even though airport expansion would mean significantly more environmental damage, putting at risk the UK’s legally binding commitment to reach net zero by 2050, it’s unclear how ministers will respond to several upcoming airport expansion proposals.
Two things are certain: the lethal impacts of the climate crisis will get worse by the day if we do not take urgent action to cut all greenhouse gas emissions; and GALBA will continue to stand up for local people and the planet.
More on this story here: The People v Leeds Bradford Airport – new twists
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