‘Bristol Airport is big enough’ – council pledges to oppose expansion

Bath & North East Somerset Council has vowed to oppose the proposed expansion of Bristol Airport.

The regional airport wants to expand to serve 15m passengers per year. The latest bid to expand their operations came 18 months after it won a High Court case to expand to 12 million passengers per year — a move opposed at the time by local authorities.

Now Bath & North East Somerset Council has resolved near-unanimously that it will oppose the plans for the airport to expand to 15 million passengers too, the Local Democracy Reporting Service reported.

Deputy council leader Sarah Warren (Bathavon North, Liberal Democrat) said the economic argument for airport expansion was “grossly overstated” — and said it could actually have “economic disbenefits”.

She told councillors: “In our region, Bristol Airport mainly provides for outbound leisure travel translating into economic disbenefits for our domestic tourism industries. […] Bristol Airport now plans to expand its operations by around 50% at the expense of local residents who will suffer from increased traffic at all times of day and night, aircraft noise, and pollution.”

She said: “Bristol Airport is big enough.”

Bringing the motion before a full meeting of the council on March 20, Chew Valley councillor David Harding (Liberal Democrat) said that people in the area faced speeding through villages and people parking outside their homes at all hours. He described the airport as “a massive car park with an airport attached”.

He added that the airport also wanted to increase its number of permitted night flights from 4,000 to 5,000. He said: “Bristol Airport already has more night time flight breaches than Heathrow.”

The airport’s expansion plans would result in 14,000 more flights a year, with the runway lengthened to allow larger transcontinental planes to take off and land.

The vote passed with 44 councillors against the airport’s expansion, with no votes opposing it, although two councillors abstained: Mr Hughes and Chris Warren (Saltford, Independent).

In a statement, a spokesperson for Bristol Airport said: “The airport is critical to our region’s economy and Bath’s tourism sector, welcoming hundreds of thousands of inbound visitors each year. We are our area’s largest private sector employer, providing over 5,000 jobs, with 70% of employees living within 20 miles.

“We recently completed the consultation on our draft master plan to 2040 and are busy analysing the helpful feedback we’ve received. A planning application to increase our capacity to 15 million passengers a year will be made in the coming months.

“We expect our proposals to deliver 1,000 additional on-site jobs and support many more in our region, boost economic growth, and allow us to connect to new destinations, including the Middle East and North America.

“We hope to be able to work with Bath & North East Somerset Council so that we maximise the economic benefits for our area.”

It will be up to neighbouring North Somerset Council — not Bath & North East Somerset Council — to decide whether to grant planning permission for the airport expansion.

But Bath & North East Somerset Council will respond to the planning application to oppose the development, and the motion passed by councillors requests that the council leader write to government ministers and local MPs to inform them of the council’s view.

The motion also requests that all candidates for the West of England Combined Authority elections oppose the airport expansion.