Luton Airport ‘could be size of Gatwick’

At a meeting on Wednesday night, the council’s head of regeneration, Colin Chick, said the authority’s long term vision was for 31 million people a year to use the airport. In the short term it should expand to 18 million a year, he said.

Currently around nine million passengers per year use Luton Airport.

Peter Hunt from the Luton Airport Noise Action Group (LANAG) said: “They’ve put out to tender for a consultancy to help them expand to 18 million per annum in the first place. I think they’re going to pay about £300,000 for the consultancy contract.

“This is the first time we’ve heard the council say they want the expansion, rather than the airport saying it.

“They’re going to have conflicting issues though. The site is too small for what they want there – with 31 million they’re talking about an airport the size of Gatwick.

“Then they’re constrained by the transport links, even with Junction 10a being re-built. And they’ve also got problems because of the direction of the runway and airspace constraints.”

Mr Hunt said LANAG was not opposed to the development in principle and would wait to see the consultants’ report before forming an opinion.

But he said he doubted the economic benefits of expansion would be as good as figures being given out by Mr Chick during his presentation to the Luton South Area Committee meeting.

“Colin Chick talked about the jobs growth being 700 jobs per million passengers per annum,” he said. “But I’ve looked at evidence of the jobs produced between 1997 and 2010 and it had managed to produce 54 jobs per million passengers per annum.

“It might be 100 or 150 but it’s not going to produce the vast numbers that this 700 figure alludes to.”

A spokeswoman for Luton Borough Council said the authority was challenging the Department for Transport’s recent policy paper, which included a maximum growth figure of 15 million passengers per year by 2050, saying that number would push Luton “back into a regional status and potentially stall economic growth”.

In 2003 the government had granted increased status to Luton Airport, she said, allowing it to expand from regional to national status and effectively grow passenger numbers to 30 million.

She added: “It is thought additional capacity can be created using the existing runway without extension or need for a second runway.”