Annex E: Community, health and social impacts
Land and community
The NWR scheme is expected to result in the loss of 783 residential properties and several community facilities.509 Specifically, Harmondsworth primary school is expected to be lost, along with Harmondsworth Community Hall, Sipson Community Centre, Heathrow Special Needs Centre in Longford, nursery schools in Longford and Sipson, the White Horse pub in Longford, and a number of recreational facilities and spaces such as Sipson Recreation Ground. Although some mitigation is provided in terms of financial compensation, the NWR will “result in a substantial loss of housing and community facilities that cannot be reversed”, with the overall effects on community viability significantly negative. At the same time, the NWR will generate demand for an additional 300 to 500 homes per local authority per year. Provision of additional housing will also require the provision of additional community facilities, including schools, health centres, primary care centres and additional parks or open spaces.
242 residential properties will need to be demolished for the ENR scheme. Within the 100m buffer around transport infrastructure, another 165 residences may also need to be demolished. The expansion could generate demand for up to 450 homes per local authority per year up to 2030. This increased demand for properties will require additional schools, two additional health centres and two primary care centres per local authority.510
The Gatwick scheme will have a significant impact on the surrounding community. 168 properties are expected to be lost.511 Four children’s nurseries or crèche’s would also be lost as a result of it, as well as two places of worship, Trent care home, one charity facility, Crawley Rugby club, Public Rights of Way and part of Rowley Wood. The scheme will generate demand for 136 homes for each of the 14 neighbouring local authorities per year over 10 years, for a total of 19,000 houses. The AoS states that in a “worst-case scenario [these housing] figures are considered to be deliverable within this time frame as land availability is unlikely to be affected by issues such as greenbelt designations.”512
Disruption and severance impacts
Upgrades to existing road and rail infrastructure during construction of the NWR will cause disruption and severance impacts on local communities as well as road and rail users, leading to a significant negative impact. While the provision of improved and more varied travel options is expected to improve the resilience of the travel system for a period, the long term this benefit of the NWR scheme is expected to be negated by the expansion of the airport and associated increase in passenger numbers. The additional traffic and increased journey times, according to the Appraisal of Sustainability, will lead to issues of severance, loss of sense of place, breakdown in community cohesion, and a reduction in the quality of amenity within the community. Equivalent impacts are likely to be realised for the other two schemes.513
Jobs and the local economy
The NPS claims that the NWR scheme could generate up to 114,000 jobs.514 This stems from the jobs created through the construction and the attraction of businesses to the region post-development.515 Back Heathrow believe that this job growth will be important in dealing with youth unemployment in region, stemming from Heathrow’s pledge to create an additional 5,000 apprenticeships.516
For the ENR scheme, runway expansion could generate between 48,000 and 97,000 local jobs in 2030 and between 31,000 and 63,000 local jobs in 2050.517 For the Gatwick scheme, approximately 9,000 and 21,000 local job opportunities will be created in 2030 because of the expansion project, increasing to a total of between 25,000 and 60,000 local jobs in 2050.518
Displacement impacts, whereby the employment generated is a transfer of workers from other areas, have not been quantified. This could mean that at a national level, local employment impact is counterbalanced by a net ‘no change’ impact if all the additional workers transfer from other jobs elsewhere.519
Noise
The introduction of new flightpaths will result in disturbance for those people living close to the airport and experiencing increases in overflight aircraft noise. Compared to no expansion, the NWR scheme is expected to result in an additional 92,700 people exposed to significant noise annoyance by 2030. The total additional disability-adjusted life years lost over a 60-year design life period have been estimated at 20,439 due to increased annoyance effects. The NWR scheme is also expected to result in increases in exposure of schools (44 in 2030) to extreme noise events.520
For the ENR scheme, approximately 27,200 additional people will be exposed to noise over 54dB LAeq16hr by 2030; although there will be 18,200 fewer people exposed by 2050. However, exposure to noise >63 dB LAeq16hr is expected to increase by 41,600 people in 2030, then decline to 22,400 people by 2050.521 The total additional disability-adjusted life years lost over a 60-year design life period have been estimated at 9,901. The ENR scheme is also expected to result in increases in exposure of schools (20 in 2030) to extreme noise events.
For the Gatwick scheme, approximately 16,200 additional people will be exposed to airspace noise exceeding 54dB LAeq16 hr by 2030 and will increase to 21,300 by 2050. The total additional disability-adjusted life years lost over a 60-year design life period have been estimated at 7,579. The Gatwick scheme is also expected to result in increases in exposure of 12 schools in 2030 to extreme noise events.522
Air pollution
Existing air quality at and surrounding Heathrow is poor. Four of the adjacent local authorities to Heathrow have declared air quality management areas for exceedances of the annual mean NO2 air quality objective. The NWR scheme will result in increased emissions from aircraft and road traffic associated with the airport, resulting in a reversal of the baseline air quality improvements that would have been realised without the scheme. It is predicted that 121,377 people will be affected by higher NO2 concentrations (on average 0.9 μg/m3) at 47,063 properties. This will result in an adverse health effect for local residents due to an increase in mortality and morbidity as well as an increase in respiratory effects and cardiovascular risk within the study area population.523
For the ENR scheme, there will be a rise in annual NO2 levels will affect 100,392 people at 38,656 properties.524 For the Gatwick scheme,525 51,328 people and 20,985 properties will experience a rise in annual mean NO2 levels.526
Health impacts
Bringing together these and several other impacts, the DfT’s health impact analysis supporting the NPS found that the NWR scheme will have major adverse health effects on selected “children and young people” and “people with living in areas with poor health status” and moderately adverse health impacts upon all other groups. It also found that is likely that a NWR will “further increase inequalities between a number of vulnerable groups and the general population” and that “a large number of those most affected by the expansion schemes are unlikely to benefit from the opportunities provided.”527 In terms of the other schemes:
- Due to the densely populated urban area surrounding Heathrow, poor air quality resulting from the ENR scheme would affect several thousand local residents as well as sensitive receptors being affected by poorer air quality, resulting in a reversal of the baseline air quality improvements. It could potentially have major adverse health effects on selected ‘children and young people’ and ‘people with living in areas with poor health status’ and moderately adverse health impacts upon all other groups.528
- The Gatwick scheme was judged to have a lower detrimental impact upon health; this was in part due to it requiring fewer residential properties to be demolished. This would result in a fewer groups being subjected to moderately adverse health effects from the risk to both their housing tenure and housing conditions. In addition, it would result in fewer older people being subjected to potential major adverse health effects, once again, from the risk to both their housing tenure and housing conditions.529
Table 11: Summary of community and health impacts, by expansion option
Source: Appraisal of Sustainability, October 2017
Wider planning issues
The direct impacts on local community and planning considered within the NPS, and to which a future NWR development consent order (DCO) will apply, are indicated by the ‘redline’ boundary map (see figure below). In practice, the impact of the NWR will extend well beyond the ‘redline boundary’ and be felt acutely by nearby communities and local authorities. As the Joint Boroughs of Hillingdon, Richmond, Wandsworth and Windsor and Maidenhead explain:
Development at Heathrow affects the scope for other local planning decisions … it would require thousands of new homes to be built, affecting local plans, road networks and involve siting thousands of extra new residents in areas affected by bad air quality and noise pollution.530
Figure 37: Illustrative Heathrow Northwest Runway scheme boundary map531
The Heathrow Strategic Planning Group believe that:
[ … ] the draft Airports NPS fails to adequately address the full impact of an airport operating to the full parameters stated or to recognise the sub-regional scale spatial planning considerations needed to address the full scale of impacts and benefits of the airport expansion is likely to have, on for example housing and employment land and travel demand. This will reach out across a wider area administered by many local planning authorities and straddling the Greater London Authority boundary.532
On the issue of housing, one of the headline statements in the NPS in support of the Heathrow NWR scheme is that expansion of Heathrow will create 114,000 additional jobs. If these predictions are correct they will, according to Neil Spurrier, “put an intolerable burden upon the housing market.”533 The Appraisal of Sustainability reflects this sentiment, stating that “the scale of housing required will increase pressures on current local authority plans across London.”534 The latest estimates show that an additional 300 to 500 homes per local authority per year will be required.535 The London Borough of Hounslow expressed their concerns about the ability of local authorities to meet this housing need:
Local councils in areas within 30 or 40 miles of Heathrow are already struggling, in vain, to find ways to accommodate massively increased numbers of homes, as directed by government. The extra need for another 3,000 to 4,000 homes cannot be achieved by the local authorities, without sacrificing standards of housing, and building on valuable green space areas.536
Paul Hodgins, Leader of Richmond Council, added in oral evidence that “in terms of the local pressures on housing, remember that at Heathrow it assumes that there will be demolition of existing houses, and those need to be replaced. There would be incredible pressure in that area, both during the time and afterwards on local infrastructure and housing.”537 HAL disagreed with this assertion and said that beyond the immediate site area it did not “envisage a significant impact on any land available for housing development, provided that any new housing is appropriately constructed and noise insulated.”538 The Appraisal of Sustainability states that “increases in noise effects may act as an additional constraint to current housing allocations or to future housing proposals, restricting the ability of the affected local authorities to meet housing delivery targets.”539
Joseph Carter, of the Heathrow Strategic Planning Group (HSPG), believed that housing and other wider planning issues are not adequately addressed in the NPS. The HSPG believed the NPS should properly consider and plan for the wider areas of impact over time and recommended that:
A clear purpose of the Airports NPS should be to set out policy to require that planning for the expansion of the airport is aligned with that of the surrounding sub-region; this is essential to ensure the sustainable development of the airport to meet its full potential and the sustainable future of the surrounding communities.540
Alex Williams of Transport for London expressed their concern that Heathrow expansion “without adequate extra infrastructure, will stifle growth.” With respect to housing, Mr Williams believed that lessons could be learnt from the experience of the Olympics in terms managing the housing demands before and after expansion.541 HAL disagreed:
[ … ] it is difficult to see how this relatively small level of additional demand would stifle growth. The Airports Commission and the Government both modelled local economic and employment effects and identified significant additional growth associated with expansion above a “do nothing” scenario. So far from stifling growth, expansion would support more growth both around the airport and across the country.542
HAL said it was working with the HSPG “to collate a shared evidence base that will consider the likely effects of expansion, and enable local councils to better plan for the housing, economic and infrastructure needs within their areas.”543
509 Jacobs, Place Assessment, Prepared for the Airports Commission, November 2014
510 Department for Transport, Appraisal of Sustainability: Appendix A-1 Community, October 2017
511 Department for Transport, Appraisal of Sustainability: Appendix A-1 Community, October 2017
512 Department for Transport, Appraisal of Sustainability: Appendix A-1 Community, October 2017
513 Department for Transport, Appraisal of Sustainability: Appendix A-1 Community, October 2017
514 Department for Transport, Revised Draft Airports National Policy Statement, October 2017, p 24
515 It should be noted that this falls within a range down to 57,000 given the uncertainties associated with the type of airport and the size of the airport employment catchment areas.
517 Department for Transport, Appraisal of Sustainability: Appendix A-1 Quality of Life, October 2017, p 26
518 Department for Transport, Appraisal of Sustainability: Appendix A-1 Quality of Life, October 2017, p 26, p 19
519 Department for Transport, Appraisal of Sustainability, October 2017, p 73
520 Department for Transport, Appraisal of Sustainability: Appendix A-4 Noise, October 2017, p 42
521 Department for Transport, Appraisal of Sustainability: Appendix A-1 Community, October 2017, p 18
522 Department for Transport, Appraisal of Sustainability: Appendix A-1 Community, October 2017, p 15
523 Department for Transport, Health Impact Analysis, October 2017, p 84
524 Department for Transport, Appraisal of Sustainability: Appendix A-1 Community, October 2017, p 18
525 Department for Transport, Health Impact Analysis, October 2017, p.28
526 Department for Transport, Appraisal of Sustainability: Appendix A-1 Community, October 2017, p 15
527 Department for Transport, Health Impact Analysis, October 2017, p 4
528 Department for Transport, Health Impact Analysis, October 2017, p 153
529 Department for Transport, Health Impact Analysis, October 2017, p 150
530 London Boroughs of Hillingdon, Richmond and Wandsworth and Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, March 2017 (NPS0045)
531 Department for Transport, Revised Draft Airports National Policy Statement, October 2017, Appendix A
534 Department for Transport, Appraisal of Sustainability: Appendix A-1 Community, October 2017, p 20
535 Airports Commission, Local Economy Impacts: Assessment, 2014
537 Q276
539 Department for Transport, Appraisal of Sustainability: Appendix A-1 Community, October 2017, p 22
541 Q277
Published: 23 March 2018