Airports: Construction

Mr. Amess
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what criteria his Department uses in assessing the merits of proposals to expand airports; and if he will make a statement.

Jim Fitzpatrick
The Department for Transport undertook a series of wide-ranging studies to assess the merits of alternative airport expansion options in developing the 2003 White Paper, “The Future of Air Transport”. The largest of these, the South East Regional Airports Study (SERAS) announced in 1999, looked in detail at a large number of options for expanding airport capacity in the South East and East of England. Impacts were assessed in accordance with “The Appraisal Framework for Airports in South East and Eastern Regions of England”, available at:

www.dft.gov.uk/consultations/archive/2002/fd/appraisal frameworkforairport1384

This appraisal framework follows that in the then Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions (DTLR)'s “Guidance on Methodologies for Multi-Modal Studies”, which formed the basis for the Department's current published transport appraisal guidance—available at:

www.dft.gov.uk/webtag/

which has been used, for example, in preparing the Impact Assessment accompanying the Secretary of State's decisions on adding capacity at Heathrow airport.