UK Government ditches airport plans

16-01-2004

The RSPB (Birdlife in the UK) has greeted with relief the British Government’s announcement that there will be no new airport at Cliffe in southern England. A Government white paper in 2002-3 proposed a four-runway airport on the north Kent marshes that would have ruined a refuge for up to 200,000 wintering wild birds. A new airport would have wiped out one RSPB reserve and damaged two others.

"At last the UK Government has accepted the blindingly obvious," said the RSPB’s Chief Executive, Graham Wynne when he heard the news on 16 December. "To include Cliffe in the first place was downright ludicrous. It is disappointing that we have been forced to fight to save a site that is already protected by Europe’s toughest wildlife laws." The RSPB argued that Cliffe never made sense from an aviation perspective, either - the risk of birdstrike meant that it would have been the UK’s most dangerous airport by far.

“At last the UK Government has accepted the blindingly obvious!" —Graham Wynne, Chief Executive, The RSPB

The ‘No Airport At Cliffe!’ campaign was the RSPB’s largest campaign yet. One hundred and fifty thousand RSPB supporters urged the Government to drop the Cliffe proposal. These pledges doubled the number of responses the Government received from its public consultation - a fact which was noted by the Secretary of State for Transport during debates in Parliament. In late October, dozens of RSPB staff and members descended on Westminster to lobby their Members of Parliament to stop the Cliffe proposal. Graham Wynne said: "We can all congratulate each other for our hard work to have the crazy idea of an airport at Cliffe thrown out for good."