In a week that you probably thought it just couldn't get any worse for aviation expansion, and more encouraging for anti expansion campaigners, well it did.
Will Boris Johnson,Mayor of London reconsider his position on the expansion? We'll just have to wait to see.
Extract of the News from Darren Johnson:
Ground control to Mayor Johnson: your worst planning decision award for 2010
25 MARCH 2010
Abstract: Expansion of flights at City Airport was 2009’s most damaging planning decision in London, according to Darren Johnson.
Doubling the number of flights through City Airport has won Boris Johnson the coveted 2010 “worst planning decision” award. London Assembly member Darren Johnson makes the award each year for the planning decision he considers to be the most damaging, in parallel to the Mayor’s London Planning Awards. The trophy is an inscribed breeze-block.
Darren Johnson commented:
“Despite his bluster about sweetening the air the Mayor has waved through a massive expansion in noisy polluting flights that will blight much of the capital. Local residents are fighting a legal challenge, neighbouring boroughs never got a say and environmental groups have made an overwhelming case against it.
“If the Mayor pushed businesses to follow his own staff in managing travel demand he could have stopped this expansion in its tracks.”
ENDS
Notes to editors
Darren Johnson is available for comment.
Each planning case passed the Mayor’s desk, and decisions were made by the Mayor or subsequently by the local planning authority in 2009. Details of each of the short listed schemes can be found at the following links.
London City Airport
http://www.london.gov.uk/mayor/planning_decisions/strategic_dev/2008/20080909/london_city_airport_report.pdf
http://www.london.gov.uk/mayor/planning_decisions/strategic_dev/2008/20080909/london_city_airport_decision_letter.pdf
Ian Wingrove, Press Officer for the London Assembly Green Group: 020 7983 4424
