Build from scratch or build from strength?

Moving people around the globe, quickly and efficiently is vital to UK trade and investment. Heathrowprovides access for business to both established and emerging new markets.

In setting up its Airport Commission, the Government has recognised that the UK’s hub capacity is critical to economic success. The question now is how and where to expand to meet this urgent need?

The Government has three options. It can do nothing and let the UK fall behind European competitors at the cost of growth and jobs. It can add additional capacity at Heathrow. Or it can replace Heathrowwith a new hub airport, either at Stansted or in the Thames Estuary.

Today, we have published the Best Placed for Britain report, alongside architectural and planning consultants AECOM and Quod. The report illustrates why Heathrowis best placed to be the UK’s hub. It is best placed for passengers, for business and for the economy, best placed for taxpayers and best placed to help the UK compete in the global race.

The idea that closing Heathrowand moving the UK’s hub airport to the east of London can be easily achieved is inconceivable. Moving a hub airport the size of Heathrow a 54 - or 58 - mile drive to the east would be without international precedent. The closure of an employment site of this size would be without national precedent.

Heathrowis the 2nd largest employment site in the UK; 76,600 people are directly employed at Heathrowand the airport supports a total of 114,000 local jobs. Perhaps employees would simply migrate to a new airport? Even if one-third of workers moved to work at a new Thames Estuary Airport, there would be huge pressure on local housing markets - over 30,000 new houses would be needed and new social infrastructure. Unemployment to the west of London would also undoubtedly increase; Heathrow’s five local boroughs could see unemployment double.

An exceptional set of business clusters have developed around Heathrow over the last 50 years making up one of the most productive and dynamic economic zones in Europe with Heathrowat its heart. There are no guarantees that these business networks would move east and remain in the UK if Heathrowcloses.

What would happen to the vast area occupied by HeathrowAirport? In the long term there may be opportunities at the old Heathrowsite, but it could take 20 – 30 years for the site to be fully redeveloped. Battersea Power Station closed in 1983 and its redevelopment is likely to be completed some 33 years later in 2017. London’s only comparable experience was the closure of the docks. Over a ten-year period, the five Dockland Boroughs lost 150,000 jobs. Despite billions of pounds of investment over the last 30 years, these jobs have never been fully replaced and employment in East London remains significantly below its peak.

Britain already has one of the world’s most successful international hub airports in Heathrow. This year, Heathrowwon the ACI-Europe award for Best Airport with over 25million passengers. Why build from scratch, when we can build on the strength that exists around Heathrowtoday?

View a response to this articlefrom London First.