Leeds Bradford expansion grounded

A plane takes off over Leeds. But plans to expand the airport have been sucessfully challenged by campaigners.

Airport expansion to be given the go-ahead despite a wave of opposition. Sound familiar? Well, this time it's not Heathrow or Stansted, it's Leeds Bradford airport, the expansion plans for which were featured on the BBC news yesterday:

"Bought for nearly £150 million, now the owners of Leeds Bradford Airport have their sights set on a £70 million expansion... The council is meeting in Leeds today and are expected to give it the go-ahead despite opposition..."

Same old story eh? Well, not this time, actually. It looks like the BBC got it a bit wrong, because yesterday the airport expansion plans were deferred by Leeds councillors, who took on board local campaigners' arguments that increased passenger numbers would lead to more traffic, more noise, and more carbon emissions - all adding up to make an expanded airport an environmental disaster zone. The plans, they said, had to be rethought.

At the moment 3 million people a year use the airport, and the planned new terminal would have handled up to 5 million. That the plans have been shelved is a great piece of news, because it shows that there's no inevitability to airport expansion plans - the environmental arguments against ever-increasing numbers of flights are so strong they can trump corporate profit or government dictat. In a very short timeframe, campaigners assembled a coalition to highlight the environmental impact of an expanded airport, and as a result of their hard work, the number of objections to the scheme went from 0 to 800 within just two months. Not surprising, given that an expanded airport would produce more CO2 than the entire city of Leeds.

The plans haven't been overturned yet - but the deferral is an important signal that airport expansion, whether it's at regional airports, or at bigger hubs like Heathrow, is a policy whose time has past. And if councillors are deferring airport expansions following 800 objections in two months, surely the government should be thinking seriously about Heathrow - given that the Airplot campaign found 30,000 people who objected to Heathrow expansion in just one week...