Heathrow Hub has announced it has started the process to appeal a High Court judgement to refuse a judicial review of the government’s decision to approve a third runway at Heathrow airport.
The consortium, which submitted an alternative proposal for extending one of the airport’s existing runways rather than building a new one, has applied for permission to launch an appeal of the 1 May ruling, which said the process undertaken by the government to approve the third landing strip was lawful.
Director Jock Lowe claims the group has been advised that this ruling is “legally flawed, at odds with the evidence the court itself heard and gives us strong grounds to appeal”.
Heathrow Hub bases its case on four grounds:
- That transport secretary Chris Grayling effectively gave Heathrow airport the power to veto alternative proposals by asking it to guarantee that it would implement a competing scheme, which the airport allegedly did not agree to;
- That the High Court judges ignored an admission from Grayling that this lack of a guarantee played a part in his decision-making process;
- That the court allegedly declined to make a finding on the admissibility of its evidence and that when it did regard the disputed material, it was in a manner that prejudiced Heathrow Hub because the court said Grayling ‘did not mean what he said’ in front of Parliament;
- And that the court made an error in finding that Heathrow Hub did not have a ‘legitimate expectation’ that Grayling would not reject its scheme if the airport failed to guarantee to implement it if Grayling found it to be the most suitable scheme.
Lowe continued: “We continue to believe that the Department for Transport bungled the decision-making process for Heathrow expansion and that our Extended Runway proposal is cheaper, quieter and simpler to build than the ridiculously complicated and expensive North West Runway.
“Despite ongoing legal proceedings, an Extended Runway could still be operational much sooner than Heathrow Airport Ltd’s North West Runway scheme, which remains uncosted, and is barely recognisable as the proposal considered by the Airports Commission or indeed approved by Parliament.”
More details about Heathrow Hub's proposal can be found at heathrowhub.com