Airport planning: Up in the air, with no clear path ahead

Terry Waite is not a man to shirk a challenge. In 1987, he flew to Beirut, against official advice, to negotiate with Islamic fundamentalists for the release of Western hostages but was himself taken captive for four years. Thirty years on, he is taking on a different kind of opponent - the airline industry - over plans to expand the capacity of Stansted airport in Essex.

The decision to block the expansion, taken last year, is to be reviewed by a public inquiry, which begins on Wednesday. On the offensive will be Stansted's owner, BAA (which has received unlikely backing in the form of feminist writer and critic, and local resident, Germaine Greer). The Stop Stansted Expansion campaign, backed by Mr Waite, and environmentalists, makes up the defence. The Stansted public inquiry will last until October at least, and promises to be controversial, messy and expensive.

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But the inquiry could be one of the last of its kind. Details of a new planning system to handle applications for major infrastructure projects, such as airports, and overhaul the existing regime, were published by the Government last week.

The current system is certainly in need of reform. At present, most planning decisions are made by local authorities. For developers, this means that getting planning permission can resemble a lottery: different councils have different agendas or concerns, and decision making is frequently inconsistent.

With major infrastructure projects of national importance, such as proposals to build a new airport runway, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government can intervene. But the way in which ministers and officials make their decisions is not always transparent, and politics can interfere.

Howard Bassford, head of planning at the law firm DLA Piper, says: "Promoters' [developers'] biggest concerns over the current planning regime are uncertainty over the process and uncertainty over the outcome."

Under the proposals published last week, government ministers will draw up "national policy statements" covering key sectors for planning, such as transport and energy. In effect, this has been done already for airports; a civil aviation White Paper published in 2003 recommended the construction of four new runways in the UK.

A new independent commission would replace local authorities (and in the case of major projects, ministers) to rule on planning applications. In theory, this would make decisions more consistent, more open and - most controversially (and something government officials are loath to admit) - less likely to be blocked by local groups like Stop Stansted Expansion.

There are plenty of unanswered questions concerning the proposed regime, not least over how the independent commission - to be staffed by "wise men" including business leaders and environmentalists - would work. It is not clear, for example, how environmentalists could ever support expansion of an airport, or whether they would have power to veto the commission's decisions.

Planning experts say that the Government would take into account climate change. But by making planning policy a national concern, any government which, on the one hand, recommends a massive growth in airport capacity and, on the other, a 60 per cent cut in carbon emissions by 2020 (from 1990 levels), risks tying itself and its planning wise men in knots.

The planning White Paper comes at a crucial time for the airline industry. If flights are not limited, the estimated number of passengers passing through UK airports will rise from 228 million in 2005 to 490 million by 2030. At Stansted, BAA wants to raise the capacity from 25 to 35 million passengers a year. If the public inquiry allows this expansion to go ahead, BAA will press on with plans for a second runway.

BAA also wants to expand capacity at Heathrow (which it operates along with Gatwick and the main Scottish airports). Heathrow, with two runways, was built to handle 45 million passengers a year, but last year some 68 million passed through. In contrast, Frankfurt airport, which has four runways, has about 50 million passengers a year. The 2003 White Paper backed a third runway at Heathrow; this autumn the Government will hold a consultation on expanding capacity at the airport.

The planning regime proposed last week is not expected to be in place until at least the end of the decade. The expansion of Heathrow and Stansted is likely to be under way by then, but a new regime could speed that up. The last thing the aviation - or government - wants is a repeat of the fiasco over Heathrow's Terminal 5, which took seven years to get the go-ahead.

BAA says any more delay in the expansion of Heathrow would lead to it slipping further down the pecking order of European airports and damage the UK economy. The airport used to serve the second-largest number of destinations in Europe. Now it has slipped to fourth position behind Paris, Frankfurt and Amsterdam's Schiphol.

A spokesman for the Airport Operators Association (AOA) says: "When deciding where to set up operations, international businesses are clearly influenced by how many destinations a city's airport serves."

The Government insists that local communities still be consulted under the new regime - they would still be able to push for a public inquiry to challenge rulings, for example.

"You can't please all the people all of the time," says planning expert Mr Bassford, "but the most important thing is to have a process where people are consulted and actually heard. They need to see that their views really make a difference, even if projects ultimately go ahead."

But the purpose of setting up an independent central commission, and drawing up national policy statements is clear - decisions will in the end be made centrally, rather than locally. In future, consultations with local groups will seem to be more a case of telling people what's going to happen, rather than asking them if they want it in the first place.

To cope with huge demand for air travel, Britain's overstretched airports must be expanded. But this is not the only sector whose growth would benefit from a new planning regime. The Government's long-awaited energy review, outlining proposals for more nuclear reactors and tidal and wind projects, was published last week. It would be supremely ironic if - as seems likely - a new planning regime facilitated both the expansion of the carbon-emitting aviation industry and the construction of a brand-new energy infrastructure designed to help prevent global warming.