The Richmond Heathrow Campaign
Our Campaign
The Richmond Heathrow Campaign represents three amenity groups in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames - The Richmond Society, The Friends of Richmond Green, and the Kew Society - which together have over 2000 members.
The members of our amenity groups are adversely affected by noise from Heathrow Airport’s flight paths, poor air quality, increased road and rail congestion in west London, and ultimately, carbon emissions.
1. We oppose flightpath changes causing aircraft to depart over Richmond and Kew and any other changes that would reduce noise respite.
Richmond and Kew already experience noise from aircraft landing towards the west, which takes place about 70% of the time. There is next to no disturbance from aircraft during the 30% of the time that departures are to the east.
In January 2018 the UK Civil Aviation Authority initiated an airspace modernisation process which together with cessation of the Cranford Agreement could potentially introduce departure flightpaths for the first time over the Richmond and Kew area. Heathrow is currently designing a number of flightpath options but unlike some other UK airports which have focussed on a problem-solving approach, it has opted to redesign its airspace entirely by evaluating all possible flightpaths.
Consequently, flightpaths are being considered that would result in noise for Richmond and Kew from take-offs and landings every day. This airspace modernisation process gives insufficient emphasis to the ‘do minimum option’ and designates the principle of landing/take-off respite as ‘desirable’ rather than ‘mandatory’.
The Richmond Heathrow Campaign has engaged with all government and public consultations on this topic, and is an active member of the Heathrow’s Noise and Airspace Community Forum (NACF). To view our responses, please see our page on Airspace Modernisation.
2. We oppose any expansion of flight numbers at Heathrow, whether as a result of a new third runway or via changes such as the introduction of ‘mixed mode’.
The evidence in the Airports Commission’s report indicated that a Third Runway at Heathrow would not deliver significant increased aviation capacity for the UK. The majority of the increased capacity at Heathrow would be used either for international transfers that add little value to the UK or consist of activity cannibalised from regional airports. Regional growth would be penalised with no overall benefit to the UK.
Given the financial structure of Heathrow and the normal escalation of project costs, the project to build a Third Runway could well fail leaving the government and taxpayer with a bailout commitment measured in billions or tens of billions of pounds.
Moreover, there is no credible way of reducing carbon emissions in conjunction with a substantial increase of flights at Heathrow. Heathrow expansion would make it far harder, and probably impossible, for the UK to meet its climate change committments.
While plans for a Third Runway are currently paused, recent newspaper articles suggest that lobbying for a Third Runway continues.
Expansion of over 20% in flight frequency by introducing ‘Mixed Mode’ is probably more likely than a costly Third Runway. Mixed Mode uses the two existing runways, which means aircraft land and take-off from the same runway at more or less the same time and it removes the current half day respite from alternating the runway use. The additional flights use the current flightpaths thereby increasing the noise still further for communities already overflown, unlike a Third Runway which would spread the noise across additional flightpaths.
Expansion of flight numbers by a Third Runway and Mixed Mode would both require the current cap of 480,000 flights a year to be increased with a commensurate increase in aircraft noise, pollution and surface access congestion.
Passenger growth also potentially adds to aircraft noise and pollution. New like-for-like aircraft types are less noisy but often the new aircraft are larger and travel longer distances with additional fuel so the capacity of the fleet using Heathrow provides for more passengers but at ever increasing overall weight of the fleet. So even without expansion of flight numbers there is likely to be increased noise.
We believe that it would be preferable to aim for a better Heathrow rather than a bigger Heathrow, and to capitalise on the world beating advantage of all of London’s five airports.
As with Airspace Modernisation, the Richmond Heathrow Campaign has engaged with all government and public consultations. For more information, please see our page on the Third Runway.
3. We seek an end to Heathrow night flights.
Currently 16 flights land at Heathrow between 4:30 am and 6:00 am, and many more between 6:00 am and 7:00 am. World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines state that a fixed interval of 8 hours is a minimal choice for night-time protection from noise, but Richmond and Kew currently receive just 5½ hours and that is often interrupted by late running flights and dispensations.
No rational justification has been supplied for the 16 scheduled flights that disturb Richmond and Kew between 4:30 am and 6:00 am and these should be ended now.
There is capacity to move all night flights (11pm to 7am) to the day, which Richmond Heathrow Campaign is pursuing. The Richmond Heathrow Campaign has engaged with all government and public consultations on Night Flights, and has, via the Noise and Airspace Community Forum (NACF) initiated a process obliging Heathrow to provide a justification for a selection of the flights arriving before 7:00am.
For more information, please see our page on Night Flights.
Get involved with the campaign
For how you can get involved please see our Get Involved page.