Oral evidence: Scrutiny of the draft Heathrow Expansion National Policy Statement, HC 482
Oral evidence, 13 October 2026.
Witnesses
Christian Hughes, Deborah Petty, Mike Fawcett, Stewart Pomeroy and Parmjit Dhanda.
Chair
Welcome to this afternoon’s evidence session, the fifth session of our scrutiny of the Government’s draft Heathrow Expansion National Policy Statement. We welcome Chris Hinchliff MP, joining us as a guest from the Environmental Audit Committee. We will be hosting two panels this afternoon. During our first panel we will be hearing from a community campaign supportive of the expansion plans and leaders of residents’ associations in the Heathrow area that have a variety of views. On our second panel we will be hearing from representatives of the Climate Change Committee that recently published its formal advice to Government on the proposed expansion of Heathrow Airport. Could I also remind members of the Committee to introduce yourselves before directing questions to the witnesses? I recognise many people sitting in the public gallery who will already know this but speaking from the public gallery is unfortunately not permitted during Committee proceedings. Could I ask our first panel of witnesses to introduce themselves?
Parmjit Dhanda
I am from Back Heathrow. We are a campaign of 105,000 people who live predominantly close to Heathrow; over half live within 8 miles of the airport. We would like to see the growth and opportunities that come with a new runway.
Mike Fawcett
I am representing the Putney Society—the civic society of people living in Putney and Roehampton—where one of the chief concerns is noise from planes flying overhead, not least those that wake people up in the early hours of the morning.
Christian Hughes
I am from Longford Residents’ Association and am involved with HASRA and HVF, two other associations covering the local villages. We have lived with Heathrow collectively as a neighbour for hundreds of years among residents. Many of us are highly opposed and would obviously like our views represented here today.
Deborah Petty
Since 2019 I have sat on the Noise and Airspace Community Forum at Heathrow representing the Molesey Residents Association but also with a wider responsibility to keep Elmbridge Council informed of forum matters.
Stewart Pomeroy
I am from the Colne Valley Regional Park, the first large area of countryside to the west of London providing accessible green space for 10 million people who live within 15 km of it.
Chair
Can I just establish the status of your organisations? Stewart, you are a charity funded to protect the Colne Valley Park, and that is what pays you.
Stewart Pomeroy
At its core, yes.
Chair
Deborah, Christian and Mike, are you standard residents associations and here as volunteers?
Deborah Petty
Yes, we are here as unpaid volunteers.
Mike Fawcett
Yes.
Chair
Your members may or may not pay to join, is that right?
Deborah Petty
Yes, it is about £3 a year or something.
Chair
Parmjit, Back Heathrow is mainly funded by Heathrow Airport, is that right?
Parmjit Dhanda
Heathrow Airport set it up during the Davies Commission.
Chair
Your 100,000-plus members do not necessarily have to pay; there is no membership fee, is that right?
Parmjit Dhanda
No. They largely joined up when they felt the threat of the airport being closed during the Davies Commission when there was a proposal to shut it down by the leader of the host authority at the time in Hillingdon and move it to the Thames Gateway.
Chair
Was that the Boris Johnson estuary?
Parmjit Dhanda
Yes.
Chair
Your website says you campaigned for a better and bigger Heathrow. What were you campaigning on two or three years prior to Rachel Reeves’ statement in 2025?
Parmjit Dhanda
We have been around since 2013.
Chair
I know.
Parmjit Dhanda
The airport discovered that the 105,000 supporters are very representative of the boroughs that they live in. The boroughs are 70% non-white in Hounslow, Ealing and Hillingdon. Very many of our meetings—town hall-like events—are held in all the constituencies and boroughs. They found it a useful mechanism to connect with them and be challenged by them. It has kept moving and survived even through covid. Now here we are again looking at a third runway at Heathrow Airport some 20 years after the last.
Chair
As you say, here we are again. Would it be fair to say that most of your individual members either work or used to work at Heathrow and the business members are in the supply chain?
Parmjit Dhanda
Yes, they are local businesses, trade unions, the business community and an awful lot of individual residents—many in your own host borough—from a very diverse background and 80,000 people actually work on site. There are a lot of employees in the airport.
Chair
I have 70,000 in my head, but okay. That is useful to just understand the different roles your organisations have. Stewart, I am afraid quite a lot of our questions will be to the other four but we have some specific questions for you as well.
Stewart Pomeroy
I look forward to it.
Chair
In the draft Heathrow expansion NPS, the Government set out four tests that must be met before expansion can proceed. Are these the right tests from the perspective of communities that are or would be affected by expansion? Is the threshold clear and set at the right level for determining whether each test has been met?
Deborah Petty
I reread the HENPS yesterday and have to say it was a thoroughly depressing read from a community perspective. It is the only potential protection that communities have from a permanent change to how they live and what they experience in terms of noise, particulates and pollution. I feel the HENPS falls woefully short. It is quite a partial document. The language is quite woolly, as other people have said, which gives room for manoeuvre. We are very concerned that communities are potentially going to get thrown under the bus because of the national growth infrastructure designation. At every turn in the document, the Secretary of State could just give it the green light anyway if it is in the overriding public interest. There are six quick points I would like to make. First, it is completely toothless. There are few hard and fast targets and absolutely no sanctions or penalties for failing to meet them. Secondly, it needs to have stronger independent assessments and oversight. When I first read it I thought, “Gosh, the promoters are being allowed to both report on and mark their own homework too much.” When I reread it yesterday I thought, “Blimey, they’re actually setting their own homework.” The parameters with how things are described, “Take reasonable steps,” “As much as reasonably practicable”, “try to,” essentially allow the promoters to say what they can do and get measured against that, and that is not acceptable. There are very few specific targets. There is one on mode share, the 5,000 apprenticeships and the three-year subsidy for five new domestic routes. If the main purpose is growth and jobs, there are no metrics on those. It has a very fragmented and confusing oversight structure and there needs to be a much better delivery body that communities should be represented on. As far as emissions—combining air quality and climate for speed—other more expert people have outlined that there are few protections on the particulates.
Chair
We have heard from them.
Deborah Petty
PM2s and UFPs in particular are not covered, but just because they are not measured does not mean the harm is not there. In fact you could argue that everybody around Heathrow is going to be subjected to a long-term medical experiment that they have not signed up to because we do not sufficiently know what the harms of ultrafine particles are at the moment. The unaccounted carbon cost for us is a scandal. From a community and local business point of view—all the people paying ULEZ and congestion charges and sharing the pain of transitioning to green vehicles—for aviation to be given a green light to just say, “Knock yourselves out,” and undo all that good work at the stroke of a pen for minimal if any GDP gain is really not acceptable. Moving on to noise, there is much to be said, so I hope we can return to that.
Chair
We will.
Deborah Petty
The big thing that is missing from the HENPS is noise change metrics. There is absolutely nothing that limits the amount of noise change that people can be subject to and nothing about the intensity with which routes can be flown or the number of noise events. In the 2014 events of the trial on the concentrated flight path, the change was what brought people out waving placards. That is what makes people really sit up and take notice. The communities deserve that the best data is used in the HENPS. At the moment the ANAS and ANNE studies have been delayed and therefore excluded. If they are taken into account, the inconvenient truth is that the airport has a much larger impact on noise. Rather than 400,000 people it is 4.65 million. In freedom of information requests to the DFT, 1.9 million are set to see their noise increase by 25% to 100% or more. Some 400,000 people could potentially see their noise increase by 100% or more.
Chair
What is the source of those figures?
Deborah Petty
DFT, freedom of information request. It could be from a low base of noise exposure or an already high base exposure to something catastrophic. People have a right to know what they are in for. There is no protection in the HENPS for that. Quickly on growth, for minimal GDP growth there are not enough protections on the financial viability of it. There is nothing that says there needs to be any debt control or liquidity buffers or anything like that. If the cost is as it is now, say for the Heathrow promoter scheme, the airlines have already said they will not use it; it is too expensive. Nigel Wicking was talking about £5 to £6 per person that they could weather on top of the current passenger charges. There is a genuine risk that we end up building a hugely expensive white elephant at great expense and disruption.
Chair
You have actually answered several later questions. Thank you for that very comprehensive answer. Just to remind everybody we are looking at the NPS, not the pros and cons of a third runway.
Deborah Petty
The safety of how the airways are used is not adequately covered in the HENPS either.
Christian Hughes
I would agree with Deborah on all the points that she raised. There is a lack of a joined-up approach on these things. We have a planning schedule and a follow-on airspace schedule. Again, the promoter is able to dismiss and set things if they are too expensive in terms of mitigation, which should not be the case. We have particular health problems that are not really mentioned anywhere in the HENPS, which I would like to come back to at some point. There have been huge impacts on mental health across all the local villages and the statistics are really quite devastating. We would like to see a tightening, especially around noise, vibration and UFP monitoring, and baselines taken in surrounding areas. They talk about future change; you cannot have future change if you are only working on model data. You need a baseline from the start. As the closest village, Longford—240 metres from the northern runway—for three years we have been asking for noise data, vibration data and access to UFP monitoring data, which we know they have 10 years’ worth of. We have offered sites and so on; nothing has been forthcoming. They are just reluctant to do it and we would like to know why.
Chair
You brought in two other elements in addition to the four tests, which are mental health and safety.
Mike Fawcett
I very much agree with what Debbie and Christian have both said. The HENPS has a general lack of teeth and precision and a poor evidence base. We have been particularly concerned about noise because that is what most worries people in Putney and other areas underneath the flight paths. Regarding the noise appraisal, the people who have done it have done the best they could but it is all on the basis of an indicative set of flight paths. We do not yet know where the flight paths are going to go because the airspace redesign has hardly started.
Chair
Although surely below 3,000 or 4,000 feet the final approach and the vast majority of the departures are a given.
Mike Fawcett
Yes, indeed.
Chair
It is a wider area.
Mike Fawcett
The fate of the people who live closest to the airport is absolutely clear although the HENPS does not make that very clear either. It is when you get further out that there is more uncertainty. I hesitate to use the word “test” in terms of noise because it does not actually have any effect. It says that on a couple of metrics, noise should be no worse in future than it was in 2024. There are three problems with that. One is that in 2024 the noise was already horrendous, affecting 4.65 million people on the Government’s own appraisal. Of those about half a million were, “Highly annoyed,” which are the precise words in the appraisal. Just maintaining that level of harm really is not good enough. In our view the Government ought to be seeking to reduce the amount of harm that Londoners and people living to the west of the airport are suffering. It is also a rather theoretical metric. It is measuring the average noise. I guess what it is really measuring is that—on average—planes are gradually getting quieter, but it is a very, very gradual process. Airlines do not suddenly introduce a whole new fleet of quieter aircraft. Most people will not even notice it is happening. As Debbie said it is the changes when it gets worse that are going to be much more dramatic. When the third runway opens, all the people living under the approach paths and departure routes to that runway are going to really notice that—whereas previously they might never have heard aircraft noise—they are going to have planes flying over about every two minutes for three quarters of the day. As we understand it they will only get respite for a quarter of the time on average. Similarly people living underneath the approaches to the southern runway will only have respite for a quarter of the day, whereas for decades we have had respite for nine hours each day. That is going to be a huge change.
Chair
To be fair nobody has done any modelling recently on how alternation will work.
Mike Fawcett
There are undoubtedly various options for how alternation will work.
Chair
Is that not part of the Government’s consultation?
Mike Fawcett
No, the consultation has a vague warning that respite periods might have to be reduced but it does not spell it out. When you read the noise annex to the appraisal of sustainability it explains that at any given time there will be two streams of approaching aircraft and two streams of departing aircraft. That is four streams of aircraft on three runways. The way it will work is that one runway will take purely arriving aircraft, one will take purely departing aircraft, and the third will take a mixture of both arrivals and departures, what they call mixed mode. What the noise appraisal also reveals is that the runway in the middle—the existing northern runway—will not operate in mixed mode for safety reasons. That means that the southern runway will be operating in mixed mode for half the time and then have a quarter of the time on arrivals and a quarter of the time on departures, and similarly the new third runway. In total there will be arrivals on the southern runway for three quarters of the time and on the new runway for three quarters of the time. That is our deduction.
Chair
Thank you for those full answers. Parmjit, I will give you a chance. Have the Government set out the right four tests from the perspective of communities and is the threshold clear and set at the right levels for determining whether each test has been met?
Parmjit Dhanda
I will try to stick firmly to the question. On all those in our response we said yes. They are demanding targets. There is no guarantee that Heathrow is going to meet them; it is going to have to work very hard to do it. We have already heard in your own discussions around this table that some people think that it cannot or will not, but it is absolutely right that it is challenging. I am going to agree with something Deborah said. Last time around there was a lot of talk about independence and an independent noise regulator. When it comes to the DCO process I hope they have a look at that again; that would be helpful. On the subject of noise, I have to say that for so many local people whom we represent, that is not the lived experience they have. I do not know why that is. The airport has been there for 80 years and I suppose some genuinely have zoned out. It is normal to them. There is a fellow called Shafick Emmambokus, you might know him, who lives in Cranford. He claims to be the closest person to the runway; I do not know whether that is true.
Chair
Probably. Is it Berkeley Avenue?
Parmjit Dhanda
I do not have his address but it is in Cranford and very close. The constituency MP is aware of him.
Chair
John Chatt, former leader of the council, lived there.
Parmjit Dhanda
Shafick’s view is that he does not lose a night’s sleep and if anybody should be affected by noise it should be him. I meet people like him all the time and it affects different people in different ways. That is a fair comment.
Chair
That is true. Many of my constituents are slightly further east of him; he is in Seema’s constituency. Those people who live under what would be the approach path of the third runway—in north Cranford, north Heston, Osterley, north Brentford and north Chiswick—do not experience that. There would be a very significant increase in noise for them, would you agree? For the people under the existing two approach paths that has been the case for 70-plus years, but not for those to the north who have relatively little noise. How many of your members who live in that area underneath what would be the approach path—
Parmjit Dhanda
There will be thousands of them.
Chair
How many of them know what the approach and departure paths that are in the DFT documentation would be?
Parmjit Dhanda
You are right, and part of the problem has already been mentioned. We do not know exactly what the new flight path is going to be.
Chair
We know what the below 4,000 feet will be.
Parmjit Dhanda
There needs to be far more information out there.
Chair
But it is out there.
Parmjit Dhanda
I have family members who live in Harlington, for example, and would be in the WPO area. We need more clarity on compensation as well. We need to make sure that if this is to happen there is an adequate insulation scheme, which I know is something that has been debated in some meetings as well. It is crucial to get all those things right but there is a balance to be had here as well, which is the economic benefits. I know we have had a discussion about whether you include trade or inward investment in that. Jobs are very important.
Deborah Petty
May I just interject very briefly on the below 4,000 feet bit? Once performance-based navigation is in, the airports or the UCAVs will set the co-ordinates that every single plane has to follow. There will be a much greater level of route concentration than now, where there are about three or four international coding houses that different airlines use. There is a degree of spread within the 3 km noise-preferred route.
Chair
Yes but not between central London and the end of the runway; they are very concentrated.
Stewart Pomeroy
Can I come in with one sentence about the four tests? Just to quickly say it seems really odd that there is no natural environment test or that it is not more included in one of the other tests given the huge and unprecedented impact on the rivers. In answer to the test question, there is something missing.
Chair
I just wanted to pick up the effective independent noise regulator. Parmjit made a very good point: it is very, very weak at the moment as we—as MPs in the current noise insulation scheme—are finding with the RAB model mitigating against extending the noise insulation scheme to those who are eligible for it as you probably know.
Daniel Francis
My question is for Parmjit. I represent the other side of London: Bexleyheath and Crayford. You described the draft HENPS as a clear and robust framework. What is it within the draft HENPS that gives you assurances that local communities will be genuine beneficiaries, particularly in relation to long-term employment opportunities?
Parmjit Dhanda
Sorry, would you like to know what is germane to them in terms of long-term employment?
Daniel Francis
What is it that gives you assurance that they will be genuine beneficiaries?
Parmjit Dhanda
As you have seen the airport grow over the decades you have seen the number of jobs grow for local people. If you are from the diaspora, let us say the Indian subcontinent, which very many people in the local boroughs are, you cannot go to any of the home boroughs—whatever your background—without actually having a relative, neighbour or someone you know well working at the airport. Those of us who have grown up in the area have seen the benefits. The idea of having a growing airport with a supply chain sounds a little absurd; the supply chain is probably well over 100,000 workers. That probably also relates to the fact that if you look at the Savanta poll from June it said there is something like 68% support overall and in every single constituency there are more people supporting a third runway than opposing it. There is a silent majority out there. A lot of those people are people who get up early in the morning, go to work and come back, and very many of them are in the supply chain. Our experience is that there are an awful lot of workers who actually work at Heathrow. We know there are 80,000 on site but there are so many more in the supply chain in places such as trading estates, for example Park Royal, which is the biggest trading estate in Europe. The leader of Brent Council was with me just the other day talking out the importance of that and saying that a new runway can be absolutely crucial for opportunities for boroughs slightly further afield such as his.
Daniel Francis
Obviously we have heard evidence about changes that may be needed such as moving the M25 and different flight paths as we have discussed. What level of engagement have you undertaken locally on the proposed subject?
Parmjit Dhanda
We run regular surveys. We have an email tree of about 30,000 people and we stay closely in touch with them. We have regular town hall-style events. As I said at the outset and you have asked the question quite rightly, why has Heathrow continued to support Back Heathrow over the years? We are the rough and ready, raw end of the stick I suppose. You can turn up at a meeting, whether it is in Hounslow, Hillingdon, Windsor, Surrey or Buckinghamshire, and we have had lots of supporters turn out to our meetings. There was a meeting a little while ago in Slough where they came out and talked about things such as the Great Western Railway and actually gave Heathrow quite a hard time about it. “Where is the funding? When’s it going to happen? We’ve heard about this so many times.” Overall I have found—doing these meetings for some years now—there is a level of pent-up frustration among local people saying, “I thought this was meant to happen years ago. We thought this was going to happen. How much longer is it going to take? How many more delays are there going to be? Is it going to end up back in court again?” That is a problem. People start to lose trust in processes when they see Parliament vote for something with a majority of 296 and years later it is still no closer to happening. Hopefully this time it will be different.
Chair
Parmjit, at one of our earlier sessions, we asked Perry Phillips, a representative of the GMB, “If runway three does not go ahead are people worried about their jobs?” He said yes and I said, “Where’s the evidence for that?” He did not have any. Is there any evidence?
Parmjit Dhanda
Yes. From the conversations we have locally there is a feeling that if it does not happen here at our only hub airport—you have had a lot of conversations in this room about the importance of hubs—then what happens next? There is the idea of trade, jobs and opportunity moving to Schiphol; Schiphol tends to get mentioned more than the others—
Chair
I am well aware of the emotional response, because they are my constituents too. Where is the factual evidence to sustain that emotional response?
Parmjit Dhanda
I do not think anybody has run a survey to say specifically, “Are you worried? What are the things that worry you?”
Chair
Not, “Are you worried?” Obviously that goes with the territory.
Parmjit Dhanda
We get that in conversation.
Chair
Has anyone coldly assessed that as a risk?
Parmjit Dhanda
Statistically that is the sort of thing we should be asking someone such as David Blunkett in the role that he has in terms of the economic forecasting for the future, working to ensure that there are jobs for the future and to get that analysis from local people in terms of what they are thinking. Maybe that is something he could look at. It is fair enough to ask the question, but I know what the answer would be. I am pretty confident the answer would be, “We are concerned because we want jobs for the next generation.”
Chair
I get the, “We are concerned,” bit; it was about the factual stuff. The second question is about Slough, and I cannot remember if it was Hillingdon and/or the local authority grouping that made a proposal that as Heathrow is a massive generator of jobs and economy there should be an enterprise zone. There should be a much bigger investment in the link between the local area and investment in and around Heathrow. We do not have anything like that at the moment. Is anybody doing any work on that? Are you proposing that?
Parmjit Dhanda
I am at those local meetings. Actually quite a lot of stuff gets suggested like that including better work with local schools. Some good things have come out of that on an individual basis.
Chair
Is that because people feel that Heathrow Airport Ltd is not doing that at the moment?
Parmjit Dhanda
Generally people think it is doing a great job in providing jobs, opportunities and apprenticeships.
Chair
There are always vacancies at Heathrow.
Parmjit Dhanda
There are. There are a lot of opportunities there but obviously the current generation that are working there want more. My parents’ generation wanted much more for their kids. That is a normal thing.
Chair
We noted that deprivation is increasing in the areas around Heathrow as well.
Parmjit Dhanda
The local boroughs—not least your own—suffered very badly during covid. You will know, partly because so many of your own people work at Heathrow.
Chair
It still has not picked up.
Parmjit Dhanda
There were 30,000 people furloughed at the time.
Chair
That is a fair point.
Deborah Petty
May I just say one thing?
Chair
Very briefly, yes.
Deborah Petty
The claims that Heathrow has made about 108,000 jobs are not in the public domain in any detail and have not been substantiated. They are not broken down. The only thing we know for sure is 5,000 apprenticeships because that is a metric that is set. One of your earlier panels said that the net gain in jobs could be as little as 7,000 because of displacement, substitution and so on.
Chair
Is that after construction?
Deborah Petty
After construction. T5 was a classic example. It promised 6,000 permanent jobs, threatened that 9,000 to 16,000 or something would be lost if it did not go ahead and then said there would be 6,000 construction jobs for that. The airport has been really coy about what has been delivered. I had a meeting with Elmbridge Borough Council recently where I asked, “Do you know how many people in the borough are employed by the airport and whether any of the promises made previously were honoured?” The answer was no.
Chair
Steff, is there anything you wanted to pick up on?
Steff Aquarone
It has been pretty well covered.
Chair
Could I just ask Christian, because your area is the only one represented: your area benefits from the noise mitigation schemes, how is it going?
Christian Hughes
It is varied. It took a long time coming. To put it in context, the closest property in Longford village is 240 metres from the northern runway and the furthest is about 480 metres, so there is a very close concentration. I personally am about 400 metres. Despite that, I have been fighting with Heathrow in excess of 20 years for replacement windows and have been told that I was the wrong side of a contour line and therefore did not qualify. Only because it was part of the noise plan was it rolled out very quickly.
Chair
Am I right that people are still waiting for what they had expected to have after Terminal 5?
Christian Hughes
That is correct, yes.
Chair
We will now go on to air pollution.
Jacob Collier
How well does the draft HENPS address the concerns about air pollution impacts resulting from the airport expansion? Are you confident that air pollution will be properly monitored and managed over the longer term?
Chair
There is no need to repeat what you have already said, it is on the record.
Mike Fawcett
I have to say that in Putney, 9 miles, 10 miles from the airport, noise is our greatest concern, so we have not looked at air quality issues.
Christian Hughes
I know that ultrafine particles are not on the Government’s radar in terms of planning controls right now, but there is increasing evidence that ultrafines contribute to things such as dementia, heart and lung issues, and so on. I cannot emphasise enough that there needs to be a precautionary principle included in the HENPS; there is nothing in there about ultrafines at this point. I have a copy of a document here actually written by Brian Stacey, the head of air quality at Heathrow, that outlines that it has been known for the last decade that ultrafine particles are up to 14.5 times the World Health Organization recommended exposure level on a regular basis. That is with two runways. There is nothing in the HENPS that means that monitoring has to be done. There is obviously European legislation coming in whereby super sites will need to be monitored from December, but there is no mention of that in the HENPS. We would like to see really stringent controls and have visibility of the data that it has. Three years ago we specifically asked for the equivalent monitoring that it has in LHR2, which is the station closest to the northern runway: at the Cranford end it is 170 metres away. We asked for equivalent monitoring equipment to be put in Green Gates, which is in the middle of our village. It has basically come up with a budget version of that, with sensors that are cheaper to maintain, and we still do not have visibility. We might have nice new windows and insulation to protect from noise but, to go back a step, if easterly alternation comes in—the step before the third runway—which is what it wants to do starting with mixed mode, we will not be able to go out into our gardens and enjoy the summer or sleep with our windows open during that supposed respite. It needs tightening. UFPs need to be taken into account. We need to have access to that data and proper modelling across local boroughs so that there is a baseline. I keep coming back to that: we need to have a baseline, not only for ultrafines but for other particulates as well. It has been remiss, and we need to get better at it.
Chair
Deborah covered that point very well.
Deborah Petty
I agree with those points. The local authorities need to be supported financially if they are going to have the burden of monitoring put on them. We need more and accurate monitors, both for particulates and for noise.
Chair
That is a useful point, thank you. We will now turn to access.
Daniel Francis
Does the draft HENPS sufficiently address the transport impacts of Heathrow expansion on local communities? Do you think the mitigation measures are clear and robust enough to prevent additional traffic from overburdening local roads?
Deborah Petty
The short answer is no. An additional 60,000—at best—vehicles on the road daily is untenable. I quite often go to meetings at the airport, and as the crow flies I live about 10 km away. My record is one hour 45 minutes back to home, with current traffics and stuff. Other people have talked about the M25 being turned into a potential car park; I do not think that is a cost that has been actually modelled either. That means that things get pushed on to the local infrastructure. Even if Heathrow is going to insist on using green vehicles to try to minimise emissions, they are heavier and they damage the local roads more. You are going to have more interruptions from potential roadworks and things to try to keep the road network going. If the southern and western rail, which is not factored into any of the costs properly at the moment, does not happen, you cannot attempt to get the mode share targets that it is after anywhere. The danger is that most people will fall back on vehicles, which have their own emission issues. For people just going about their daily lives, getting anywhere is a real problem.
Chair
We have had a couple of sessions on that.
Daniel Francis
If you did have southern and western rail, do you think the targets are achievable in that scenario? What impact or benefit would that have to local people?
Deborah Petty
It depends on where they genuinely hook up to and how good those services are. Some rail infrastructure people were saying that you need to build it in advance to try to change people’s behaviour before the airport comes on-stream. That is a massive investment to make that also has its own impact in terms of the build going on. It would help, but personally I do not think that people who live within a certain radius of the airport are ever going to move away from vehicles. It makes no sense to go to hubs further out to then go back further in. From where I live I would never take the train to the airport. None of the proposals for southern or western rail would actually affect people who are in my borough to make them change their behaviour.
Chair
We will turn to environmental monitoring; at last Stewart gets a question.
Chris Hinchliff
Mr Pomeroy, the Government have said that Heathrow expansion does not need to come at the expense of the green belt. Do you think the national policy statement as currently drafted is set out to achieve that?
Stewart Pomeroy
I do not see how you can do that without affecting the green belt. There is something like 1,200 hectares of green belt to be lost, plus all the knock-on impacts that are not considered as part of this because cumulative impact does not seem to be being addressed. Those businesses that are being displaced: hotels, BA headquarters, the Grundon Incinerator industrial estates, plus the houses—
Chair
Harmondsworth immigration centre.
Stewart Pomeroy
Yes, exactly, plus the new business that will be attracted by a bigger airport, this is going to have an immense impact on the green belt. I cannot see at all how it is possible to state that it can be done without an impact on the green belt. We have to remember that the areas of the Colne Valley Regional Park provide that attractive place for people to use. I have already mentioned the 10 million people who live within 15 km. There are the people who currently live near the airport and people who will move in as other people move out. They all need access to attractive and useful green space. We need some joined-up thinking and a co-ordinated approach to this rather than this piecemeal, bite-by-bite section without the cumulative impact being considered. I have not even mentioned data centres and everything else that is proposed in this area.
Chris Hinchliff
Thinking ahead to a parliamentary Committee report on the national policy statement, is there any recommendation that you would have in terms of how the policy statement could be improved or strengthened in order to result in better outcomes for the green belt, compared to how it is currently drafted?
Stewart Pomeroy
That comes back to that missing test about the natural environment and the impact on the rivers; I hope we can come to rivers in a bit more detail in a few minutes. We need that master plan for it to pick up on some of the points we have heard. It is not just public transport; you also have the opportunity for active travel to get around the local area. Currently you could argue the first taste of England for our international visitors is, in places, a national disgrace. We need to restore the landscape to provide something we can all be proud of. We hear from Government about win-wins for growth and nature; we need to see them.
Chris Hinchliff
Just very briefly on that, what would your response be to someone who would say that biodiversity net gain requirements will automatically require that improvement in the natural environment as a result of this development?
Stewart Pomeroy
We also need that joined-up approach in the way that the landscape and the rivers work, and we need those internationally protected sites. We need to ensure they are connected across the landscape and that we do not carry on with this unco-ordinated piecemeal bites approach. We need to ensure there is connectivity for people and wildlife.
Chris Hinchliff
Following on from what we have just heard from yourself, Mr Pomeroy, and from many of the other guests today, it brings me back to something that Ms Petty referred to very early on: the draft HENPS designates the development as critical national growth infrastructure. If the draft is approved with that policy in place, does that not effectively have the potential to outweigh the concerns that you have set out in relation to air pollution, noise pollution, traffic, and environmental impacts on the landscape as well? Thinking about what changes, if any, ought to be made to the draft policy statement, would any of you have confidence that the supposed growth would be effectively balanced against your concerns with the draft as it currently is, or does that critical national growth infrastructure need to be amended in order for your concerns to be taken seriously?
Deborah Petty
I would say it needs to be amended to take our concerns seriously. We are absolutely worried that we are going to be stuffed by it, basically. That they will just say, “This trumps everything, and therefore we are going to do it,” in the face of any evidence to the contrary, which is a big concern. On the growth argument I would also say that the DfT needs to do some more work on looking at whether the airlines would actually follow through with what they threaten. If it is too expensive, they have basically said they are going to take their planes somewhere else. If they do that not only do you have a white elephant, you have one that is potentially going to start eating into the mother elephant next door. The actual profitability of the extant airport could be compromised by out-of-control expense and cost on the extension. I do not think anybody has modelled that. At the moment it is contributing £23 billion to the GDP. The supposed extension is meant to deliver between £0.03 billion and £0.05 billion, which is a tenth of what was previously advised to MPs when it was first mooted. There is a real danger, particularly if the promoters are on a knife edge financially, as they are. Standard & Poor has rated it as potentially credit negative now, as well as sensitive. Anybody who invests in it is going to want to have their share of interest for something risky. Heathrow is a potential promoter that has been paying dividends, not husbanding its own cash to put into it, so it is looking to the debt and bond markets to pick that up and it is going to be on very fine margins. Nobody believes that Heathrow can fulfil what even it has proposed as a massively expensive scheme for the costs it has proposed. It is even at the lower end of its own internal estimates. If its cost overruns it is going to be completely unaffordable, and therefore the extant profitability of the existing airport could be damaged.
Chris Hinchliff
For the other members of the panel, notwithstanding the fact that the growth figures have been very heavily criticised during this process, would any of you like to comment on whether that designation of critical national growth infrastructure impacts on the possibility of taking a reasoned approach to balancing the concerns that you have made?
Stewart Pomeroy
It feels very unbalanced. I would say that critical national growth infrastructure cannot and should not remove the need to demonstrate that unacceptable impacts are avoided, mitigated, and controlled. We have to get the balance right and it feels that that status has unbalanced everything.
Mike Fawcett
Yes, I very much agree with that, and this is a very important question that you have raised. Taking the noise test as an example, the actual test is set at a level that the Government’s own forecasts suggest will easily be met even if there is no effort whatsoever from Heathrow, the airlines or the Government, just because planes will gradually get quieter. It does not reflect real-world impacts, but that test would be met. Due to the designation as critical national growth infrastructure there is absolutely no incentive for Heathrow, when it submits its DCO application, to come up with anything better.
Chair
I will let Parmjit come in, but we are on a 10-minute warning and I still have three more questions we are covering. I am sorry, but we have done critical national growth infrastructure at previous sessions so if I can I want to keep it to the community impacts this session.
Parmjit Dhanda
In terms of how the DfT does its stats or whether it includes investment or trade in that, which it really should, it is nearer £17 billion than 0.05%, which is 10% of that. Either way, is it critical? From the view of local people it is pretty critical because they have seen the levels of local support, they work there and they want it. They see the polling, they see Parliament, and a parliamentary Committee supported it back in 2012, or whenever it was. They have seen it go to the courts: the appeal court and the Supreme Court gave it the green light. We are just waiting. Even when we go through this process there is the DCO to go through as well, which is where a lot of this detailed discussion with Ministers, quite rightly, is still to come.
Chair
The parameters have changed. The economic modelling and our climate change commitments have changed. We have three residents groups here and many more who wrote in who are not on the same page as Back Heathrow. Their evidence has either been neutral or a modest expansion.
Parmjit Dhanda
Not every group has the number of members that we have and represents the communities that we do across those boroughs as well.
Chair
Yes, that is a point you have already made, but thank you.
Chris Hinchliff
Would anyone on the panel like to comment on whether the draft policy statement is drafted adequately in relation to compensation, perhaps particularly picking up on the points that you referred to about air pollution and the potential health impacts?
Chair
Sorry, what we meant by compensation was mainly about compensation for the loss of property value, and that is mainly for Christian.
Christian Hughes
Compensation is a difficult topic. Those that want to go want to go now, and the only way they can do that is through a blight process. What we have seen over the last 20 to 30 years is a systematic undermining of the fabric of our communities because of Heathrow. It is an attractive employer, as Parmjit references, but that has driven more people into the community. We have gone from around 14,500 residents in 2021 up to about 18,000 now. A lot of that influx is not because of new properties being built, it is because the fabric of our community is being undermined with predatory investors turning family homes into HMOs. It is useful for people who want to just put their head down somewhere and have easy access to the airport. Those people will probably be the ones worst affected come the development, if it goes ahead. A tenant’s compensation is far lower than if you are a property owner in situ living in your primary property. There has also been a huge softening over the years. When Heathrow first launched its consultation over a decade ago it said, “We will give 125% of the unblighted value of homes.” We have seen a softening in the more recent documentation that basically says, “It is now 125% of the unaffected value.” What is the difference? From our perspective we need to see some really hard and fast rules, it is supposed to be there.
Chair
You said that in your submission, thank you. I am sorry, I need to move on because I want to get the last two questions out.
Alex Mayer
How well does the draft HENPS capture potential impacts on communities beyond Heathrow’s immediate development boundary, including on connectivity, local amenity, construction disruption, and access to services?
Stewart Pomeroy
Could I come in on that?
Chair
If you have not already answered that question.
Stewart Pomeroy
On connectivity, building a new airport the size of Gatwick on top of five rivers affects connectivity between the internationally rare chalk streams of the Chilterns and the Thames. That covers a catchment of 1,000 square kilometres, taking us way up into Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire. There is a huge connectivity impact that building on top of those rivers has.
Deborah Petty
Can you just repeat the last bit of your question?
Alex Mayer
Connectivity, local amenity, construction, disruption, and access to services: any views on how well the draft HENPS captures those potential impacts?
Christian Hughes
I would really like to jump in on access to services. The south of the borough in Hillingdon has had very little in terms of health services for decades. We have been fighting for them for as long as I can remember and some of the villages have no dentist, no GP and no pharmacy. From a practical perspective we have engaged with Heathrow and with local authorities to try to get these things funded, but nothing has been happening and there is this consistent pattern. Coming back to the surface access, we have issues with AVAs that are still unresolved that could be solved very easily if people sat around a table. There is no obligation for Heathrow to do so and actually properly engage with communities to resolve issues that are very clearly of its making. I want to mention a really quick point; it is in the evidence already but I want you to be aware. We have about 18,000 residents. Pre-covid, for 300,000 residents in Hillingdon, there were about 1,200 referrals to MIND, the local mental health charity. Post-covid, specifically with people’s inability to understand where they are going to be living moving forward, Hillingdon MIND has had 7,500 referrals in the last year—2025—and 69% of those are within that 18,000 population that is the Heathrow villages. That is the level of uncertainty that we are dealing with, and in terms of community engagement that is what we are having to face.
Deborah Petty
I am slightly further out, but the construction of this is going to suck in building resource and skills particularly that could and should be being used in other areas to provide housing and cladding remediation. It is prioritising this project over the really vital provision of homes, both close to the airport but also potentially further out; we are not going to be able to just magic up those construction people from nowhere. That cannibalisation effect of how much it is going to suck into itself and therefore affect everywhere further out is something that needs to be considered. In terms of travel it will inevitably have an impact on people just trying to get anywhere around the M25 to find alternative routes through for local connectivity.
Mike Fawcett
Some 17,000 people who will be displaced will have to go slightly further afield to the new boundary, where the rents will be higher and they may not be able to afford to work at Heathrow anymore.
Parmjit Dhanda
I agree with Christian and what he said about certainty. People locally have felt an awful lot of uncertainty over the years. Particularly around those blighted communities they need to be able to access that money sooner rather than later. I also agree in terms of surface access; this is a great opportunity locally to have better surface access.
Chair
Does that need to be added, or improved, in the draft HENPS?
Parmjit Dhanda
I would be all for improving it and driving it through quicker, if possible.
Chair
Okay, and there is the local free bus, which has not come back and is not going to.
Christian Hughes
Absolutely. It quite happily paid out £500 million in dividends—or whatever it was—and said, “When we return to profitability we will bring the bus back for the free travel zone.” Has it? No, of course it has not.
Chair
No, and it is not likely to either.
Christian Hughes
It is just a catalogue of broken promises.
Parmjit Dhanda
There is also, Christian, actually an issue around buses at nighttime for workers as well; something that the unions are very keen to keep, as you are probably aware, Chair.
Chair
We are, thank you.
Alex Mayer
Moving on to heritage, finally. Obviously nobody likes it if the village that they live in is knocked down. I completely understand that. If we get to a situation whereby certain places are demolished, is there enough in the document that provides recompense for that? Would we be losing anything genuinely unique? Is there anything in the document that goes further than a standard planning practice?
Christian Hughes
Absolutely nothing. There is a 600-year-old barn, the oldest barn that we have in Europe, with no vibration or noise monitoring in place. We are talking about a new runway that will be probably within 50 metres of that structure, which is a grade 1 listed building. We have been asking for vibration monitoring in Longford Village, as I say, for three years now, and nothing has been forthcoming. We have recently been offered an appointment but it does not want to do seismic monitoring, it only wants to do airborne noise monitoring.
Alex Mayer
Sorry, but that is what is happening at the moment. Do you think there should be anything specific in this document?
Christian Hughes
Absolutely. As we have said all along, we need to have a rigid structure that says, “You must put in place this monitoring,” and it must be done beforehand so that there is a baseline and it cannot be any worse afterwards.
Parmjit Dhanda
I have read that specific chapter quite closely in the HENPS. What it says as a framework works in terms of, “Find alternative solutions if you can,” if there is an impact on some kind of habitats in some way, and, “Ensure, if necessary, compensation is in place.” It also talks about, “Reasons of overriding public interest.” I am not talking about the barn here, but on some occasions I suspect jobs and local communities may well be within that. The next stage in this really is the detail. That has to be at the DCO process, where you can actually talk about these individual things and find solutions for them.
Christian Hughes
In our opinion there is too much being left to the DCO stage.
Deborah Petty
The DCO stage, yes.
Christian Hughes
That is the problem. We need these things finite in advance and not left up to Heathrow and its huge budgets to promote. It is having 200 or 300 meetings with civil servants this year, if not more; there is a very clear engagement with communities that Heathrow is ignoring.
Chair
Although Heathrow Airport Ltd may well have a consultation.
Parmjit Dhanda
In that case we are 100% agreed; get to DCO quickly.
Chair
Does everybody agree that if this is not sorted out in the national policy statement it should be in the DCO, and too much is being left? Just for the record, I saw nodding from Mike and Deborah that too much is being left to the DCO.
Stewart Pomeroy
We need to sort it at this stage in the national policy statement. I particularly wanted to mention the issue of mitigation and affordability; if the whole scheme is not affordable, then why cut the mitigation? Is it the right scheme?
Chair
Others have said that too.
Mike Fawcett
Yes, too much is being left to the DCO because this is not going to be a normal DCO application. It is going to be one where the promoter knows that the project is going to get approved. It completely changes the whole dynamics.
Chair
Thank you very much for all your evidence, written and oral. If there is something that you feel was not included or you did not have a chance to say, within reason and if it is brief, we may accept some more evidence. Quickly, Christian?
Christian Hughes
Just a very quick one. We are at the section 106 stage of the easterlies application that was approved by Hillingdon back in December. I want to be really clear; section 106 is supposed to be for mitigation. The only thing that is being mentioned at the moment is an obligation to monitor. That is exactly what the current HENPS looks to do. It is basically saying, “Oh, we will look at this, but we will look to monitor and assess it later.” We need to get these things sorted now.
Chair
Just for clarification, that is the planning decision for the easterly operation on the northern runway, which is with Hillingdon Council at the moment?
Christian Hughes
Correct, yes.
Chair
That brings our first panel to an end. Thank you for your evidence and the time you have taken to prepare.