Pages 298-303 of the Luton Rising Business Plan cover its Corporate Strategies.
They start with the Green Controlled Growth mantra. This is the guaranteed condition that environmental considerations will be on a par with commercial, social, and economic ones.
There is the usual mumbo jumbo about passenger and movement growth being capped if the environmental circumstances are threatened. There is, however, no mention of what Luton Rising (LR) is saying at the current consultations, that these caps will be legally binding, and not open to interpretation as now.
It is common knowledge that LR was the driving force in 2015 to subsidise rapid passenger growth, which in turn shattered the planning conditions on noise contours at night, set under the last airport expansion, Project Curium. This led, of course, to the recent application by the airport operator to increase passengers per annum by one million, but more importantly to rewrite the noise contours to suit their own purposes.
We think a reference from George Orwell’s Animal Farm shows how LR, and indeed LBC will, interpret these “legally binding “conditions: – “all planning conditions are equal, but some are more equal than others”. Rather than the environment now being on a par with commercial growth and income, it is still the sacrificial lamb, as growth is King.
Next comes Sustainability/Net Zero. Here are a couple of extracts: –
“The scope covers the airport and other assets and activities, including commercial assets and applies to construction, operations, surface access and aviation”
Then in a following paragraph we have: –
“As we look to deliver against these strategies, we recognise that certain aspects of our business fall under our direct control, such as construction and operations and other aspects fall outside our control, such as aviation, and require ongoing engagement and collaboration with our stakeholders to enable the success of our strategy.”
So just exactly what is does this mean? It means that whilst they are fully responsible for the control of emissions from aviation, they want more flights and therefore more passengers arriving, so they will blame Central Government for the emissions these will bring, because they have not stopped Luton Airport growing.
Most people take responsibility for their actions with the simple rule, just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Whilst LR take the stance, do what we like and blame everyone else.
Green Controlled Growth AKA, Greed Controlled Growth.