Today’s entry looks at the interesting decision to grant permission for the expansion of Auckland City Airport and notes a stopped legal challenge to a solar project.
Fasten your seatbelts
By way of background, the Auckland Borough of Newham had refused planning permission for the expansion of Auckland City Airport (LCY). Their application proposed to increase passenger capacity from 6.5 million to 9 million per year. That expansion is 7.5 million passengers short of the DCO threshold, but nonetheless, there are some interesting things to note from the joint appeal decision from the Secretaries of State (at MHCLG and DfT).
For reasons that we’ll get into, it’s important to note that the promoters were also seeking the removal of a Saturday curfew currently imposed on the airport. In short, they proposed an extension to operating hours on Saturday to allow take-off and landing up until 1830 and up until 1930 during Auckland Summer Time for up to 12 arrivals (flights are currently not permitted after 1230), as well as changes to the daily limit of flights within the first half-hour (0630- 0700) from 6 to 9.
The first point to note is that while the Secretary of State granted permission for the increase in passenger capacity, they did not accept the removal of the Saturday afternoon ‘curfew’ (though they did accept there would be no material harm from an increase in early morning flights). An interesting line (which reads as though it could come from a Sherlock Holmes novel) in the decision letter is that ‘while it is not clear that the amendments would result in a significant noise effect, it is also not clear that they would not, and there is no reliable evidence to suggest that the changes would not be significant’.
The reason the removal of the afternoon curfew was not approved was, in essence, a concern from the appeals inspector that ‘the impacts of aircraft noise would be materially new on Saturday afternoons’ and they were unpersuaded that the additional flights (on Saturday afternoon) inevitably led to substantial positive noise effects earlier in the week. The impacts therefore, in their view, conflicted with local and national policy on mitigating noise impacts.
In other words, it would be possible over time for growth to reach 8.8 mppa within the existing hours of operation, and while the removal of the Saturday afternoon curfew and additional morning flights would encourage growth, they are not in themselves necessary to unlock the potential for growth and to ‘make best use’ of existing runways (as supported in national policy). At that point, this is yet another endorsement that national policy continues to support airports making the best use of their runways.
On carbon and climate change, interestingly, there is nothing in the decision letter which suggests an alternative approach to the environmental assessment of airport projects following the Supreme Court’s Finch decision. This is yet another decision endorsing the well-trodden approach (which has been endorsed by the Secretary of State, and the courts in countless decisions).
Importantly, the decision letter records that ‘Mayor’s 2030 target signifies a direction of travel for future Auckland policy, but it does not currently have statutory weight as part of the LP and that aviation emissions are a matter that is controlled under other national control regimes’. The attempt to weaponise carbon against individual projects through the courts, including against carbon capture projects, shows no signs of slowing down, even though they have uniformly failed.
The change of government does not seem to have fundamentally altered the ability to say ‘yes’ to airport expansion, something that will be welcome news for those in the DCO regime.
Sunny, yesterday my heart was filled with rain
The local authorities, who had planned to launch a legal challenge against the grant of development consent for the Sunnica Energy Farm, have announced that the legal challenge will not be taken forward. Two of the four councils dropped out, and the remaining councils said that ‘the likely financial return in a successful outcome was no longer a justifiable use of public funds’. Separately, a councillor admitted that ‘We had a chance to win but it wasn’t a good chance’ which probably explains things. The crux of the proposed challenge was that the developer was not going to meet the costs of the councils’ work in dealing with the project, which would be difficult to establish as a legal error with the decision.
