Policy & Principles

Advancing Sustainable Aviation Policy on Behalf of Local Communities

SASIG strongly urge that Government address the need for a new national aviation policy that:

• Is based on the need to control the impacts rather than the aviation activity.
• Has considered in detail all options for providing capacity to meet forecast demand, and for providing for other, lower levels of demand.
• Embraces the concept of integrated transport provision.
• Audits the parameters that should be used in any forecasts of future demand.
• Adopts an assessment process for aviation developments that explicitly includes all associated costs.
• Sets effective environmental limits for the aviation industry to meet, taking the appropriate form – regulation, charges, taxes, etc.
• Considers and mitigates the impact of greenhouse gas emissions.
• Develops the economic analysis of aviation, and in particular improves valuation of the net impact – benefits and dis-benefits.
• Coordinates with other transport policies and with other associated national policies, such as climate change, and energy policies. 

SASIG Policy Principles 

i. To give the population of all parts of the UK the social and business opportunities to travel from their nearest airport where feasible. 

ii. To capture, not stifle, the social and economic benefits of aviation using robust and objective evidence. 

iii. To direct aviation growth to locations where it will assist sustainable economic regeneration. 

iv. To minimise adverse impacts – social, economic and environmental – by protecting people and non-transferable habitats. 

v. To offer the aviation industry tough but realistic parameters based upon associated impacts around which to secure growth. 

vi. To ensure that the air transport sector rather than local communities pays the full costs of the impact of growth in air travel and airports. 

vii. To ensure that good quality surface access links are provided to airports, particularly public transport links that create integrated transport hubs and where access to an airport is either likely to or is known to cause congestion issues. 

viii. To promote better point-to-point air services from regional airports, with sensitive control over relevant impacts, to improve connectivity and help capture wider economic benefits of aviation to local, city and regional economies. 

ix. To work with Government and other bodies to ensure that noise impacts as a result of airport growth, airspace changes and flight path changes on local communities are reduced and mitigated. 

x. To support the coordination and integration of the full spectrum of national policies on issues relating to aviation. This must accord with international and regional policy making and implementation. 

xi. To promote investigation of the economic and environmental impacts of the air freight industry, supporting the development of infrastructure to support the sector where it can most appropriately be accommodated. 

xii. To encourage Governments and the aviation industry to make greater efforts to reduce aviation’s impacts on climate change. 

xiii. To instigate and design, in collaboration with external partners, innovative policies and methodologies for identifying, measuring and addressing effectively the noise, health, social infrastructure and wider strategic planning impacts of airport development.

ix. To give the population of all parts of the UK the social and business opportunities to travel from their nearest airport where feasible 

x. To give the population of all parts of the UK the social and business opportunities to travel from their nearest airport where feasible