This information was published in the January 1971 edition of Action Forum. At the time the proposed third London airport was suggested to be based at Foulness in the Thames Estuary.
British Airport Authority suggested expanding Stansted; Public outcry by local residents. Sheppey Group formed in July 1967 due to pressure built up in favour of Sheppey instead of STANSTED.
Government refuses permission for Stansted to be expanded.
Roskill Commission was set up in May 1968 to inquire into the timing of the need for a four runway airport, to consider the various alternative sites and to recommend which sites should be selected. Sheppey Group submitted primary evidence in September 1968.
74 days of public hearings were held between April and August 1970.
Preliminary report published December 1970
Full report published January 1971
Third London Airport— Extracts from the Commissions Report
The Government intends that decisions on the location and the timing of the construction of the Third London Airport should be taken as soon as possible. The Government will, however, allow adequate time after publication of the full report for public discussion and for consideration of the views of those concerned before coming to a firm decision.
NOTES:
The Commission (except Professor Buchanan) make three main recommendations;
(a) a third London airport should be built at Cublington in Buckinghamshire;
(b) the first runway at the airport should be brought into operation during 1980
(c) immediate planning should take place in order to provide the opportunity for an earlier opening date should subsequent events make this desirable.
Map of the Thames estuary showing the sites of Foulness in relation to Rainham and Medway along with roads in 1964
The Site Choice
There is no ideal site for a new London airport. The air traveller, the airline operator and the airport authority unite in wanting a site as near as possible to the air travel "market. The more it is sought to avoid imposing an airport on an existing populous community, the further away must the airport be sited. But if it is sited too far it will not serve its purpose as an airport. There is little point in spending vast sums of money on high speed aircraft if adequate provision is not made to enable traffic to pass swiftly through airports and if easy access to and from airports in terms of distance and time is not provided. The needs of the air traveller should not be given decisive weight. The air traveller is not in general making more than a few journeys a year. The man on the ground who suffers from noise caused by the air traveller’s aircraft is the victim of this nuisance. He endures the interruptions caused by aircraft. It has generally been accepted that there should be a third London airport and that this country should not purchase peace and quiet at the price of cutting itself off from the world’s main air routes.
We are fully alive to the destruction and hardship which a new airport would cause but conservation does not consist only of a defensive strategy to preserve the past. It consists also of the provision of increased opportunities to satisfy future needs and where possible to put right the mistakes of the past. We have seen our task as requiring us to balance the advantages and disadvantages - both from the investment and the planning points of view-of the four sites in the light of our judgement on the massive evidence before us.
The Rejection of Foulness
One of the advantages often claimed for Foulness was the possibility of combining an airport with a seaport and possibly also with large scale industrial development because of the possibility of sharing certain costs. We were urged by the Thames Estuary Development Company to accept that Foulness has some special advantage in that private capital would be available for the development of an airport there but not for an airport at an inland site. The company accepted that its proposals could not be implemented without cost to the taxpayer. We can see that the scheme as put to us would be attractive to its promoters as well as to those who would put up the capital. The entire risks of failure of the airport would in fact be borne by the airport authority and ultimately by the taxpayer.
Foulness has the advantage that the earlier provision of new roads to the west of London to meet the needs of the Airport is likely to do less environmental damage to rural areas than the corresponding provision of new roads to the north west of London to meet the needs of an airport at either Cublington or Thurleigh. The roads required in the south east corridor are like to do damage to urban areas on a scale which will not occur in the corridors between London and either of the Inland sites. Recent experience suggests that public resistance to the construction of motorways through heavily populated areas is no less strong than to the construction of motorways through open countryside. An airport at Cublington or Thurleigh would effectively bringto an end air transport operations at Luton. An airport at Foulness would encourage further growth of such operations at Luton. Even a relatively modest growth would mean that more households would be affected by the noise caused by Foulness and Luton combined than by the noise caused by either Cublington or Thurleigh.
The choice of Foulness would encourage developments at other existing airports and possible earlier provision of new airports elsewhere in the country. By far the greatest disadvantage of Foulness arises from its relative inaccessibility to air traffic by reason of its geographical position. This affects the volume of traffic using the airport throughout its operating life. The traffic estimates show that in the single year 1991 some 12 million air passenger journeys would be made through the airport if it were at Cublington or Thurleigh than if it were at Foulness. By the year 2000 this gap will have widened to some 30 million air journeys out of a total of some 200 million in the system of airports which we have considered.
The extent to which the volume of traffic differs as between sites is a crucial indication of the likely success or failure of one site compared with another. On this also depends the commercial success of the airlines and of the British Airports Authority. Further there would be a serious risk of loss of some traffic to other countries and a possibility of foreign governments imposing penalties upon British airlines abroad as a reprisal for their airlines being forced to operate from a badly placed airport. There is a substantial risk that Foulness would never produce an adequate return on the substantial capital sums invested in it and that it would become a liability to the tax payer. We believe therefore that the right answer in the interests of the nation rests in a choice of site which, however damaging to some, affords on a balanced judgement of advantages and disadvantages, the best opportunity of benefiting the nation as a whole.
A third London airport will afford a means of alleviating the noise burden caused by Heathrow. Many have claimed that Foulness would be the best site for this purpose. We disagree. The site which has the greatest chance of doing this and also possible of preventing an increased noise burden at Gatwick is the site which is least unattractive to air passengers and to airline operators. The choice of Foulness would undoubtedly increase the already powerful attraction of Heathrow and Gatwick to air traffic and to airlines.
We have therefore reluctantly felt obliged to reject Foulness as the site for the third London airport and to prefer one of the two remaining inland sites. The environmental disadvantages of Cublington are many and serious. The noise damage and other loss affecting the Vale of Aylesbury and the loss of Stewkley Church are harsh sacrifices even though the latter could be moved but we reluctantly feel unable to accept that the sacrifices outweigh the undoubted advantages of Cublington as the site for a third London airport.
Notes - December 2024.
After this information was published in 1971 and despite the conclusion that Foulness was not a suitable site, an Act of Parliament was passed – the Maplin Development Act 1973 – that paved the way for a Thames Estuary Airport at Maplin Sands, Foulness. However, the airport proposal was shelved and plans for a new third airport were replaced by redevelopment of Stansted.