Europe’s busiest airport is set to get bigger, as Britain green-lights tortured Heathrow expansion project

Plans for a third runway at Heathrow were first announced more than two decades ago. (Toby Melville/Reuters via CNN Newsource)

LONDON — Britain’s government has backed a tortured effort to build a third runway at Heathrow, Europe’s busiest airport, throwing its weight behind a decades-old proposal that has been beset by political, legal and environmental challenges.

The UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer (finance minister), Rachel Reeves, gave a green light to the ambitious plan and a swathe of other infrastructure projects in a major speech on Wednesday, in a push for economic growth.

The announcement is a major moment for one of the world’s most expensive and controversial aviation projects. Since 2003, Heathrow has said its terminals and runways are running near capacity, and that a £14 billion ($17.3bn) expansion is needed to keep up with the pace of tourism and business travel.

But environmental campaigners have bitterly resisted the plans, arguing it would jeopardize Britain’s net zero commitments.

Reeves said on Wednesday that a third runway would “make Britain’s the world’s best-connected place to do business,” and insisted that ministers “cannot duck the decision any longer.”

A third runway is “badly needed,” she argued, adding: “There are emerging markets and new cities around the world that we aren’t connected to because there aren’t the slots at Heathrow – or indeed any other airport – to fly to.” Heathrow said it served 83.9 million passengers last year, its busiest year on record.

It could still be years until work starts on a new runway; the government will assess proposals from this summer, and the final plan will likely require a parliamentary vote and could see legal challenges. The pre-pandemic plan for a third runway was blocked by a court on environmental grounds in 2020, before the Supreme Court overturned that decision.

The UK has made a legally-binding commitment to reach net zero (where greenhouse gas emissions equal emissions removed from the atmosphere) by 2050. Non-profit organization Transport & Environment said Wednesday’s announcement was “dystopian,” insisting major airports like Heathrow should reduce flight numbers and focus on becoming hubs for sustainable aviation fuel.

Heathrow expansion was the centerpiece of a range of announcements made by Reeves on Wednesday. Reeves and Prime Minister Keir Starmer have pledged to unpick the country’s labyrinthine planning laws, and Reeves took direct aim at environmental requirements that have stalled large-scale construction efforts.

Reeves said she would “stop blockers getting in the way of development” and reduce environmental requirements placed on developers if they pay into a centralized nature restoration fund, “so they can focus on getting things built, and stop worrying about the bats and the newts.”

“I have been genuinely shocked about how slow our planning system is,” Reeves said. “It’s ridiculous.”

Other plans backed on Wednesday include the building-up of the so-called Oxford-Cambridge Arc – the corridor of land between two of the world’s leading universities – which Reeves pitched as “Europe’s Silicon Valley.”

Britain has been plagued by low economic growth and a number of costly, high-profile projects, like a new high-speed rail line, have been announced, challenged, delayed and then shelved in recent decades.

Starmer’s Labour government, which came to power in July, has made the reversal of those trends its priority. But even those lofty aspirations succeed, the government must also tackle the short and medium-term grievances of a population dismayed by crumbling public services, comparatively low wages and crises in housing supply, migration and the cost of living.

By Rob Picheta, CNN