Heathrow Airport

Heathrow consultation 2019 - now closed

New plans showed no escape from Heathrow noise.

The council urged residents to participate in the latest consultation by Heathrow Airport Ltd to feed back on their proposals to increase flights to more than half a million a year, as well as expand the airport by creating a third runway that will add another 260,000 flights a year if approved.

The impact of the additional increased flights at the current two-runway airport was likely to result in more flights early in the morning, between 6am and 7am.

With a third runway, noise from an expanded Heathrow would affect communities in all parts of Hillingdon, with many people set to experience significant annoyance from Heathrow aircraft for the first time.

Heathrow's published plans showed that Ruislip, Northwood, Harefield, Uxbridge, Hayes, West Drayton, Yeading and Yiewsley would experience extreme noise levels from the additional air traffic movements.

Residents had until Monday 4 March to provide feedback. 

Full details of the effects on Hillingdon can be found in their consultation report.

The diagrams show the affected areas in Hillingdon. These were taken from the official consultation document detailing the impact of a new northern runway and you can see how it affects Hillingdon on pages 31, 33, 35, and 37.

Page 11 and 12 of the report stated the main impact was anticipated to be between 6am and 7am, when the total number of aircraft landing at Heathrow on both runways could increase significantly. 

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Heathrow consultation 2017 - now closed

On 2 February, the government published, for public consultation, its support for the option for a north-west runway at Heathrow and sent a short leaflet to 1.5 million homes around the airport listing estimated economic benefits and total sums available for damage mitigation but providing no real facts to enable residents to consider how this development would affect either their lives or the local environment.

The council, with its partners, published its own information on the consultation for residents, which outlined the detrimental environmental impacts that the government's publicity leaflet failed to include.

The council's information highlighted how the consultation was misleading, rushed and didn't provide sufficient information to allow consultees to make a proper informed response on issues, such as increasing aircraft noise levels, illegal pollution levels, health impacts, costs to the taxpayer, traffic increases or the loss of noise respite periods.

The government hadn't told people the location of the airport's new flight paths, so people did not know if their home, schools or communities would be beneath a new landing or take-off route or how many times a day flights would occur.

Government-organised consultation events for residents to understand the proposals were also poorly publicised, with the first at Uxbridge Community Centre held only 12 days after the consultation was published and in the half-term holiday.

The second was held on 4 March at Yiewsley and West Drayton Community Centre, and there were no events held in Heathrow Villages, where houses were to be demolished.

The council encouraged residents to respond to the consultation and make sure the government understood how flawed it was and the devastation this option would bring.

What millions of people wanted to know was whether the new flight paths would go over their homes, schools or communities.

The flight paths should have been provided as essential information in this Government's Heathrow expansion consultation. This map was based on work carried out on behalf of the Airports Commission and showed indicative flight paths to and from the airport with a new north west runway at Heathrow.

The shaded area indicated the 3km wide flight corridors that planes could fly within. These were indicative easterly operations routes as the Government had not demanded that a firm proposal was included in the Heathrow expansion consultation.

Our response to governments NPS consultation

Please see our full response to the government's consultation on the expansion of Heathrow Airport and the re-consultation.

• LBH response to NPS consultation [2MB] - 25 May 2017
• NPS Response 4 Borough Consultation - Heathrow [421KB] - 19 December 2017