Contents
SASIG 2013/14 Meeting Dates
Regional News
Industry News
European News
Parliamentary News
House of Commons Questions
Media News
SASIG 2014/15 Meeting Dates
27 June 2014
24 October 2014
13 March 2015
Meetings are held at Local Government House, Smith Square, SW1P 3HZ, location map.
Regional News
3 Mar 2014 – Barrow Gurney Village Hall has been given a grant from the Bristol Airport Community Fund to improve its facilities.
3 Mar 2014 – East Midlands Airport has launched its Sustainable Development Plan for public consultation. The new Sustainable Development Plan states that ‘it will allow the airport to sustainably meet the opportunity for growth, whilst maintaining the role of being responsible for the environment in which the airport operates’. The plan outlines targets until 2030 and is an update to the Master Plan, which was published in 2006.
3 Mar 2014 – Building work has started on a new base for search-and-rescue helicopters at Humberside Airport. It will house two helicopters operated by US-based Bristow Helicopters, which was awarded £1.6bn contract last year by the Government to run the service from 2015.
6 Mar 2014 – Wandsworth Council is asking ministers to give the local community a greater say in how the London Heliport in Battersea is operated. The Council is backing a campaign that would see the heliport’s status upgraded under the Civil Aviation Act. This would mean that ministers and the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) would have to consult much more closely with local people and their democratically elected representatives and that the consultation would be on a statutory rather than a voluntary basis.
7 Mar 2014 – Direct train services to Manchester Airport from Dewsbury are to be cut when new timetable changes come into effect in May. Rail users will have to change at Huddersfield or Manchester Piccadilly to get to the airport when First Transpennine Express make the changes on May 17. But there will be more trains to Leeds.
7 Mar 2014 – The only London-bound flights from the Cornwall are set to secure a four-year Government-funded lifeline, with Newquay Airport planning to tender the route to potential airline operators within the next few weeks. Newquay Airport managing director Al Titterington said that the airport anticipates recommending an operator to the Department for Transport – which will fly a daily return route between Cornwall and Gatwick Airport – for sign off, by the end of June.
8 Mar 2014 – Manchester residents, along with staff from city centre businesses and representatives from Keep Britain Tidy, have taken part in the first of a series of city centre clean-ups. The clean up was paid for by the £14.5m Clean City fund, which came from the City Council’s airport dividend this financial year as a one-off – largely due to Manchester Airport Holdings Ltd’s purchase of Stansted. The fund is intended to pay for projects which can make a permanent improvement to Manchester’s environment or encourage more people to help look after their communities
10 Mar 2014 – In a private submission to the Airports Commission, Nats, the air traffic control service, have calculated ‘conflicting arrival and departure flows’ and concluded that building a fourth runway at Heathrow Airport would reduce the combined capacity of Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Luton, Birmingham, City and Southend airports by 9 per cent. They state that it would cut capacity relative to a three-runway Heathrow by 18 per cent because of the disruption to flight paths to the other main airports.
10 Mar 2014 – Chief Executive of Gatwick Airport Stewart Wingate has announced details of a scheme which would see households most affected by noise from a second runway at the airport receiving annual compensation equivalent to Band A Council Tax – currently £1,000. More than 4,000 households could qualify for the scheme.
Industry News
7 Mar 2014 – Spain’s state-owned airport operator Aena Aeropuertos expects to list on Madrid’s stock exchange in the coming months, in what would be one of Europe’s largest initial public offerings so far this year. The world’s largest airport operator by number of passengers has completed a two-year turnaround that cut staff by 20 per cent.
European News
5 Mar 2014 – The European Union has reached a preliminary agreement on a law that will exempt long-haul flights from paying for carbon emissions until 2016. Negotiators from the European Parliament, the Commission, the EU executive, and the EU presidency, representing member states, had tentatively agreed that an existing suspension of EU law for intercontinental flights should be extended.
7 Mar 2014 – Siim Kallas, the European Union (EU) Commissioner in charge of transport said the EU executive was still ‘committed to the emissions trading scheme (ETS)’. After the European Union’s institutions reached a preliminary agreement on Wednesday 5 March, Mr Kallas, admitted that he felt the EU had bowed to international pressure arriving at the compromise agreement.
6 Mar 2014 – New rules providing for the first time common standards for safe design, operation and maintenance in over 700 of the largest EU and EEA airports have become applicable. The new rules put in place a European legal framework for national aviation authorities to certify airports’ compliance with technical and operational requirements, as well as for the oversight of certified airports. They allow for the necessary flexibility in case of deviations from the airports design rules in case of already existing infrastructure. They also outline the necessary steps for the conversion of existing national airports’ certificates, based on national rules, to new certificates based on the European rules.
Parliamentary News
6 Mar 2014 – Aviation: regional airports – The House of Commons Library have published a ‘Standard Note’ entitled ‘Aviation: Regional Airports’. The note looks at airport development in the UK, outside London and the South East of England, under the present and previous governments, including the December 2013 interim report from the Airports Commission. The Labour Government’s 2003 aviation White Paper generally supported a ‘predict and provide’ approach to aviation. It envisioned demand for air transport increasing over the following 25 years. Consequently, it generally supported the growth of regional airports outside the South East to grow those economies and divert flights away from the congested London area. The Coalition Government published its Aviation Policy Framework in March 2013 – this is largely a collection of technical changes that could be made to airports to increase capacity, improve efficiency and ensure that aviation growth in the UK is sustainable in terms of noise and environmental pollution.
The Airports Commission, under the chairmanship of Sir Howard Davies, was set up in September 2012 and tasked with making recommendations as to the timing and scale of any future airport capacity. It will not publish its final report and recommendations until after the 2015 General Election but in December 2013 it published an interim report indicating that demand would increase in London and the South East and that no regional airport option could replace the need for existing capacity in that area.
House of Commons Questions
de Bois – Cost of reorganising Air Passenger Duty
3 March 2014
Nick de Bois(Conservative, Enfield North): To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what estimate he has made of the cost to the public purse of abolishing Air Passenger Duty bands D and C and moving all countries in these bands into Air Passenger Duty band B.
Nicky Morgan, Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Conservative, Loughborough): I refer the hon. Member to the answer provided on 5 December 2013, Official Report, column 757W. The hon. Member should note that the Chancellor keeps all taxes under review as part of the ongoing Budget process.
Soames – Effect of Gatwick Airport expansion on runoff water levels in West Sussex
4 March 2014
Nicholas Soames (Conservative, Mid Sussex): To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what effect expansion at Gatwick would have on runoff water levels in West Sussex and surrounding areas in cases of severe weather; and if he will make a statement.
Robert Goodwill, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport, Conservative, (Scarborough and Whitby): This Government established the independent Airports Commission to identify and recommend to Government options for maintaining this country’s status as an international hub for aviation. Although a Gatwick airport option has been shortlisted by the Commission for further examination, its final recommendations are not due to be published until the summer of 2015. The environmental impacts of any proposed infrastructure development that might result from this process would be considered as part of the preparations for the detailed planning process to which the project would inevitably be subject, were it to go ahead.
Goldsmith – Night flights at Heathrow Airport
4 March 2014
Zac Goldsmith (Conservative, Richmond Park): To ask the Secretary of State for Transport whether there are proposals to increase night flights at Heathrow Airport from 2015.
Robert Goodwill: The stage 2 consultation on night flying restrictions at Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted ended on 31 January 2014. Officials at the Department for Transport are analysing the responses, and the Government will make an announcement on a new regime to commence in October 2014 this spring.
6 March 2014
Adam Afriyie, Chair of the Members’ Expenses Committee (Conservative, Windsor): To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what assessment he has made of the potential effect of expansion of Heathrow airport on flood reservoir capacity in (a) Berkshire, (b) Surrey and (c) the surrounding areas.
Dan Rogerson, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Water, Forestry, Rural Affairs and Resource Management (Liberal Democrat, North Cornwall): No assessment has been made as yet of the potential effects of any of the proposals set out in the Davies commission’s interim report. However, DEFRA, the Environment Agency and Natural England have been represented on the commission’s Sustainability Reference Group, which has supported the commission’s work on the development of the appraisal methodology to be applied to the shortlisted options. This includes the need to assess key impacts, including on noise, air quality, biodiversity, water supply and flood risk, and is underpinned by an ecosystems services appraisal approach. The commission published the draft methodology for consultation and the final methodology will be published later in the year. The final assessment of the shortlisted options will be undertaken by the commission, independent of Government.
Media News
3 March 2014 – NATS blog: Time based separation from a pilot’s perspective.
3 Mar 2014 – The online magazine ‘Buying Business Travel’ presents its analysis of the Airports Commission’s Interim Report.
6 Mar 2014 – Housing and planning charity, the Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA), has responded to the publication of the National Planning Policy Guidance (NPPG)with a verdict of ‘mixed bag’; with a welcome emphasis on health and climate change, but lacking on garden city principles and equality. The NPPG is designed to accompany the overarching policy framework for England, the National Planning Policy Framework.
10 Mar 2014 – The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have published a Tourism and Trends Policies report at German trade show ITB. The report states that governments need to recognise tourism as a driver of jobs and growth and ‘better monitor the impacts of taxation’.
SASIG Regional&IndustryNews Bulletin 3 Mar – 9 Mar
SASIG ParliamentaryNews Bulletin 3 Mar – 9 Mar
The Parliamentary information in this Bulletin is sourced from De Havilland Information Services plc