Airport expansion wins more backing

New polling released last week shows local support for the expansion of Heathrow remains strong with more residents in 16 of the 18 parliamentary constituencies around the airport backing the programme rather than opposing it.

The polling results were released as Heathrow’s statutory Airport Expansion Consultation closed. The airport said the 12-week event had been its largest and most innovative consultative exercise to date.

It involved holding more than 40 local meetings supported by an extensive publicity campaign encouraging 2.6m households in the footprint of the airport to have their say on the expansion proposals.

The meetings were open to local residents, MPs, councillors, community groups and members of the public and designed to explain Heathrow’s proposals and encourage attendees to share their feedback.

Airport officials said following the close of the consultation, Heathrow would analyse the feedback and use it to shape its final plans for expansion and then submit this as part of its application to the Planning Inspectorate in 2020.

This in turn would kickstart the approvals process. The decision on whether to grant a development consent order (DCO) would then be made by the transport secretary following a public examination period led by the Planning Inspectorate.

(See also Heathrow’s busiest day in this issue).

www.heathrow.com

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