I have called the Council dodgy when it comes to airport related matters so I will give an example of a dodgy practice. I can give many more if there is an appetite.
The key enabler for airport expansion is the £124m access road onto Wigmore Park. It was deliberately kept out of the DCO and was included in an application for a business park that just happens to occupy the same park that is required to expand the airport. The application was on behalf of the Council owned LLAL. At the time and while we here speculated about airport expansion it was being denied there were any such plans.
By the time the Council revealed its true intention to expand the airport the application for the business park, which still sits on the same piece of land needed for airport expansion, was before the planning committee at the Council. The problem was that public and interested parties had so many weeks to put in an objection but the Council wanted to approve it before the end of last financial year due to its pending DCO application. Rather than wait and conform to conventional planning law the planning committee approved the plans before the objection window closed.
One major late objection was put in by a local primary school but the planning committee never saw it as the pro airport council planning officer decided not to give it to the planning committee. I guess he concluded why bother as it would also be ignored like the other 450 objections.
So the plans were approved despite the breach of the Local Plan that banned road traffic access to the site from residential areas, as access was needed from the east for Terminal 2 that was never mentioned on the application.
So we are now left with approval for a phoney business park that magically turns into an airport if the Council gets its way. A business park that is not viable due to its £124m access road but is viable if there is a terminal at the end of it.
Some councillors have cottoned on to the fact that if the access road was included in the DCO for airport expansion then the Council would not pick up the bill. Now the Council can’t afford to build it. Shame!