Feature article

Will businesses survive if the expansion doesn’t go ahead?

There is concern from the public in the local area surrounding Stansted Airport that if the expansion of the airport doesn’t go ahead, local businesses will suffer from the lack of business. However, campaigners against the expansion, Carol Barbone and Sir Alan Haselhurst MP, say that not allowing the expansion to go ahead won’t be a disadvantage to the local economy.

Carol Barbone is the Campaign Director of the Stop Stansted Expansion Campaign (SSE), which was established to address the threat posed by the expansion plans for Stansted Airport. Sir Alan Haselhurst is Conservative MP for Saffron Walden, Essex and Stansted airport is part of his constituency.

Carol says “the proposed expansion of Stansted to handle an extra 10 million passengers a year (10 mppa) would not have a major impact on the local economy one way or the other. It would be primarily to cater for more outbound leisure trips and only 290,000 of the additional 10mppa would be business passengers”.

Both opponents to the expansion fear that it would lead to more airport workers being recruited from outside of the area, including overseas, which will then lead to more pressure on housing and local services and not benefit the local people. Although, easyJet’s response to this is the expansion “means a huge economic contribution to the local area, in the form of jobs, but also in inbound tourism and the development of business links”, but how may of these inbound tourists are spending time and money within the area around the airport, probably very little.

Sir Alan believes that people who want to live closer to the airport are “creating pressures which are not being relieved by investment in the local infrastructure”, he adds to his concerns that “the more it expands now its creating work for non-local people and I am not sure that this is on balance serving the interests of the country as a whole or the East of England in particular”. However, Sir Alan admitted that the airport is an economic driver and it has created 10,000 jobs in the area since it was built, unemployment in his constituency is also very low. He still receives letters from his constituents to say they are against the expansion.

The SSE has the view that the local economy shouldn’t be concentrated around the airport, and the key priority is to develop a dynamic, broadly based, diverse economy. It argues that the local economy has thrived over the last 200 years by not being over-dependent on any single industry or employer.

Leisure flights

The airport is mainly used for short-haul leisure flights to Europe and Ryanair and easyJet make up 80% of the flights in and out of Stansted. SSE’s view is that the airport should focus on meeting the needs of the business traveller and less on cheap flights. It states that more long-haul services would benefit the needs of the East of England Region.

The alternative

Sir Alan believes London should have only one principle hub airport and that should be Heathrow. He says the airport used to be the busiest airport in the world but it has now slipped to fifth because of its lack of capacity. Sir Alan raised the point that if you were a businessman wanting to fly to the USA from London would you go to Stansted with its one flight a day to New York or would you go to Heathrow with its 11 flights a day on British Airways alone. You are therefore more likely to get on another flight if something goes wrong.

Sir Alan would like to see Heathrow expanded to cater for the demand in air travel, as it is the principal London airport. He says Stansted can’t be a substitute for what Heathrow offers.

It is clear that there is strong opposition to the expansion of the airport on both an economic and environmental level, but people won’t stop flying and businesses that are dependant on the airport will I believe see the expansion as a good thing.