The Royal Borough has joined forces with 12 other organisations to take their fight against a third runway at Heathrow to the High Court.

A judicial review started on February 23, challenges the government’s controversial decision to give the go ahead to a third runway announced by the then Transport Secretary Geoff Hoon just over a year ago.

A coalition of thirteen organisations – made up of local councils, leading green groups and residents’ groups, representing millions of people – is backing the legal challenge.  The coalition’s lawyers will be claiming in court that the consultation process was fundamentally flawed and that the decision to expand Heathrow is at odds with the UK’s overall climate change targets. If they win, the government’s decision to proceed with the runway will be overturned.

The coalition is alleging that additional environmental measures proposed by Geoff Hoon mean the expansion is fundamentally different to the proposals on which the government consulted the public in 2007.

One of the measures announced was a new target to bring carbon emissions from aviation back to 2005 levels by 2050. The Government asked the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) how it could meet this target. The CCC responded by telling the Government it would have to severely curtail its plans for airport expansion throughout the UK. The coalition argues that the expansion of Heathrow cannot now proceed, since the policy of which it is a part has been discredited.

Cllr David Burbage, council leader and the Royal Borough's representative on the 2M group of local authorities, said: “We’ve had no choice but to go to court to sort out the mess left behind by a decision that was little more than a quick fix. From the moment Geoff Hoon announced his decision to the House it has steadily unravelled. We now have the Government’s lawyers telling us that what the Secretary of State told MPs was not what he really meant.

“So while Geoff Hoon was saying that expansion would be limited to a half-used runway because of climate change concerns, the civil servants now say that it is not dependent on reductions in carbon emissions and or so-called greener planes. If it’s only half a runway then that demolishes the economic case. But if the conditions which were meant to limit environmental damage are worthless and we are going to get a full capacity runway anyway, then we have all been duped.

“The history of Heathrow expansion is littered with broken promises, that’s why it’s so important we get the courts to sort out the deliberate ambiguity of the Government’s decisions.”

Geraldine Nicholson, Chair of NoTRAG which represents local residents living around the airport, said: “A third runway would destroy our community.  Homes, schools, shops, pubs would all be demolished.  That is destruction on a massive scale.  What rubs even more salt into our wounds is our firm belief that the consultation process was seriously flawed.”