After a series of complaints from interested groups and individuals the Advertising Standards Authority has ruled that the Council-owned Luton Rising (LR) has deliberately misled the public over its environmental claims for airport expansion, by omitting key facts. These claims were also made to the DCO Planning Inquiry both in written reports and at hearings, as – in our opinion – LR also tried to mislead the Inquiry with claims of legally binding green controlled growth that ignored aircraft emissions, as though these were not important. They also claimed that their pledges had real bite despite only 1.3% of emissions coming from airport operations.
https://www.asa.org.uk/rulings/london-luton-airport-ltd.html
Quotes from the Advertising Standards Authority report:
“We understood that in 2019 LLA’s total GHG emissions stood at 1,341,235 tonnes CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent), of which 83.7% were from air traffic movements and around 1.3% were from airport operations. That meant the majority of LLA’s overall GHG emissions came from air traffic movements. We further understood that this figure did not include non-CO2 emissions such as soot particles, nitrogen oxide and water contrails from air traffic movements.”
“We concluded the ads omitted significant information and were therefore misleading.”
The ads breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1, 3.3 (Misleading advertising), and 11.1 (Environmental claims).
Action
The ads must not appear again in the form complained of. We told London Luton Airport Ltd t/a Luton Rising to ensure future claims were adequately qualified and did not omit material information about the environmental impact of London Luton Airport’s Expansion. The report from the Advertising Standards regulator was quickly taken up by local journalists, who recognised the importance of this ruling.
Here is one example, from Luton Today: https://www.lutontoday.co.uk/news/transport/luton-risings-airport-expansion-adverts-banned-by-watchdog-for-being-misleading-4697573
In a Freedom of Information request it was also revealed that Luton Rising spent £155,932 on advertising including spending £63,357 on outdoor posters. Many of the posters that were created will have misled the public. Luton Rising also promoted a public petition in support of Airport Expansion by peddling this misleading information to drum up signatures. The Petition was community based, created by Mohammed Tariq with the petition saying: “Importantly, we understand that these benefits will not come at the expense of the planet and people’s quality of life, as we know Luton Rising will put stringent environmental constraints on any future growth” : https://www.petitiononline.uk/expansion_of_london_luton_airport
We wonder if Luton Rising will now ask for this petition to be withdrawn.
Somehow we doubt it.