Advice to Hertfordshire County Council

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Enquiry

From
Hertfordshire County Council
Date advice given
5 October 2012
Enquiry type
Email

The Airport owner and operator are now intending to proceed on the basis of a single planning application to facilitate throughput of the airport up to 18mppa (previously they were progressing on the basis of submitting separate applications). As you are aware, there is no restriction on throughput in any planning consent, so in terms of considering whether any application would fall to the MIU to determine, this would need to be based upon an assessment of whether the application might increase capacity to a throughput of greater than 10mppa.

In advance of any planning application the Airport operator has issued for consultation a draft masterplan document. At para 4.14 the document states the following:

'4.14 ............................While the runway could, in theory accommodate a larger airport than we plan, this could not be delivered within the existing airport boundaries in a manner that would provide a satisfactory level of customer service.'

So the runway improvements proposed would facilitate capacity enhancement to in excess of 18mppa - potentially to a level that would exceed the 10mppa threshold above which any application would need to be determined by the MIU. Were the airport ultimately to handle that kind of capacity the document does not state that it would be impossible for the remainder of the airport facilities to cater for that capacity - it states that it would raise customer service issues. There is no way of knowing whether any future operator might operate the airport at the full capacity of the runway but at the expense of customer service or indeed whether customer service issues might be overcome by exercising permitted development rights, or perhaps customer service issues would not arise if the capacity in the runway were to be utilising off peak periods at a greater rate than forecast in the document.

What is the process for arriving at a common understanding of capacity issues and their consequential implications in terms of proper procedure?

Advice given

It appears to us that the thresholds in relation to airports set out in s.23 of the Planning Act 2008 are relatively clear. In summary, the threshold for triggering an NSIP for the alteration of an airport under s.23(4) is an increase in capacity of at least 10mppa or at least 10,000 air transport movements of cargo aircraft pa (see s.23(4)-(6)).

Any proposed development that met or exceeded the thresholds set out in s.23 of the Planning Act 2008 would, of course, require development consent, and necessitate submission of an application to the Planning Inspectorate.