As the date for the Judicial Review for the Luton Airport Expansion Development Consent Order (DCO) approval draws ever closer, two other interesting decisions have recently been made, which throw ever more doubts over that approval by the Department of Transport (DFT).
For several years, National Highways have held a DCO, for a tunnel on the A303 by the site of Stonehenge in Wiltshire. On the 23rd of October, the Transport Secretary at the DfT, Heidi Alexander, decided that there are “exceptional circumstances that make it appropriate to exercise the power to make the Order, revoking the A303 (Amesbury to Berwick Down) Development Consent Order 2023”.
And the BBC News: https://share.google/nCRlFfJdWvp1NixAZ
The decision document above does not go into the crucial detail of what the “exceptional circumstances” are, but logically it can only be two sets of circumstances, costs, and/or environmental impacts?
Against the A303 DCO, Luton Airport Expansion would cost at least twice the figures quoted, and have life changing environmental impacts beyond compare, both locally and globally.
Will this decision impact the outcome of the Judicial Review in November? Time will tell.
Since May 2025, the cross-party Environmental Audit Committee of the UK Government, started an inquiry into the effects of Airport Expansion on the climate and nature targets set by the UK Government. On the 24th of October, they published the report of their findings.
The precis of those findings will come as no surprise to anyone.
The Committee reported that Government policies had not demonstrated that the negative climate impact of expansion would be outweighed by the economic growth created, and this could risk the Government’s own Net Zero goals. The only prospect they saw, in meeting those goals, would be if expansion was accompanied by a serious strategic approach, to increasing the pace, of the actual real-time decarbonisation of aviation.
Sustainable Aviation Fuels – SAFs – are the only decarbonisation projects airlines are seriously investigating, but the ability to deliver them at commercial scales, and at acceptable costs, is still many years away, if they are achievable at all.
They also report that the Government has produced no supporting evidence to the economic growth figures which have been stated. The DfT has stated that they would only go ahead, if they aligned with Government legal obligations on climate change. Whilst the recommendations of the Committee, do not have to be actioned by the Government, there must come a time when they do listen?