Mayor urged to oppose Bristol Airport expansion
Plans could see the airport serving 15 million passengers a year in future
Campaigners have urged the West of England Mayor to oppose Bristol Airport’s expansion plans.
The airport has submitted a planning application to expand to serving 15 million passengers a year aboard 100,000 flights. But campaigners say the airport should have to wait until it has achieved its ambition of expanding to 12 million passengers per year before it gets permission to expand even further.
The airport submitted its planning application on Friday March 27, the same day as the leaders of local councils met in Bristol for the semi regular committee meeting of the West of England Combined Authority (WECA). Bristol Airport is located in North Somerset, which is in the process of joining the combined authority.
At the meeting, campaigners urged West of England Mayor Helen Godwin to call on Bristol Airport to pause its plans. Tony Jones of Bristol Airport Action Network (BAAN) said the plans would be “very problematic.”
He said: “None of the problems resulting from Bristol Airport’s last expansion phase — which is still ongoing — have been resolved. Given that the majority of WECA council members, Bristol and Bath & North East Somerset, are against further expansion, we believe that the WECA Mayor should call on the airport to delay its expansion ambitions.”
He urged her: “Call on the airport to wait until it has reached its current growth target of 12 million passengers per annum so that we can all see if local roads and infrastructure can cope with the increased traffic and parking requirements at this number.”
BAAN took Bristol Airport to the High Court in 2022 to try and stop it getting planning permission to expand to 12 million passengers per year, but was unsuccessful. The airport still has not completed that expansion, despite now applying to expand even further.
Mr Jones added: “Considering that North Somerset will be so very badly affected by flooding and sea level rise due to climate change, this airport in this location should wait to expand until low emission aircraft have been delivered in scale.”
The WECA committee agenda does not include a slot for the mayor to respond to public statements, but in papers published ahead of the meeting, Ms Godwin responded to similar comments submitted to the committee as written questions.
She said: “Any planning application in North Somerset will be decided by North Somerset Council. I do not currently have a role in determining individual planning applications, but believe that local people’s voices need to be heard in those processes.
“In July, I set out my position in relation to the airport, explaining that new laws tabled in Parliament look set to provide regional mayors with new powers on planning. For our part of the world, that would include North Somerset should they join our combined authority. Mindful of that responsibility, my approach, now and in the future, will be to carefully consider planning applications at the appropriate stage, looking at all the evidence.”
While the power to decide the planning application nominally lies with North Somerset Council, its decision to refuse planning permission for the previous expansion to 12 million passengers per year was overturned by the planning inspectorate.
Dundry local Trisha Woodhead also addressed the committee warning that the airport already led to “very significant tailbacks” on local roads. She said: “Night flights mean the roads and skies are hardly ever quiet.”
Campaigners called for the airport to have to wait to expand until a proposed mass transport line connecting it to Bristol city centre is completed. Ms Godwin said the airport’s expansion plans and WECA’s plans for the mass transit line were not linked.