Links to responses to the Airports Commission consultation on air quality

Date added: 3 June, 2015

The Airports Commission consultation on air quality ended on 29th May. It lasted only 3 weeks (14 working days) and as well as being technical, it was not in a format that non-experts or lay people could easily understand. Let alone respond to, other than in general terms. However, lots of organisations and individuals did manage to make sense of it, and submit responses. The response by the AEF (Aviation Environment Federation) was one of the most extensive and technical. Many other organisations responded, making the point that air quality is a key problem for all three runway proposals. Adding a runway could only have the effect of increasing the amount of air pollution, due to substantially increased numbers of road traffic movements. The emissions from diesel powered vehicles have not reduced as much as had been hoped. Models of future air pollution have to make a range of assumptions, such as layout of roads, use of vehicles within the airport, proportion of passengers travelling to and from the airport by rail, and future improvements in vehicle emissions. The health impacts of air pollution are increasingly being recognised, and the judgement by the Supreme Court that the UK must work faster to meet EU air limits has been important.
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