THE campaign group opposing plans to expand Biggin Hill airport has submitted a dossier to the council on why further development should not happen.

Flightpath, which is made up of residents and interest groups affected by the airport, handed the 66-page report over to Bromley Council last week.

The group claims extensive research shows the health and education of people living near airports suffers.

It details a Swedish study which found people's blood pressure can increase by 80 per cent when living underneath a flightpath.

And another study, published in the medical journal The Lancet, shows the reading age of 5,000 children whose schools are under flightpaths was delayed by up to six months.

From a safety point of view, it quotes Department for Transport statistics which state there is a one in 10,000 chance of someone on the ground being killed in an aircraft accident.

The Air Accidents Investigation Branch says there have been 72 incidents, including 17 fatalities and two serious injuries, involving Biggin Hill during the past decade.

The group says the dossier proves airport expansion would increase danger to residents and impair health and education chances.

Biggin Hill Airport Limited hopes to extend opening hours and introduce passenger flights. It also wants Bromley Council to review noise restrictions.

It has been lobbying the council for five years, claiming expansion would mean great economic benefits to the borough and secure the airport's future.

However, Flightpath says the airport, which made a pre-tax profit of £277,000 in 2004/05, does not need passenger flights to survive.

And it also claims the borough does not need the extra jobs expansion could provide as its unemployment level is only 2.2 per cent.

Flighpath's acting chairman, Ray Watson, said: "It is our borough and a company which merely seeks to add to its profits should not dictate our lives.

"For too long residents have been living under the threat of airport expansion with all the anxieties which it brings.

"It is time to end this uncertainty and blight and the airport should immediately withdraw its expansion plans."

A spokesman for members of Petts Wood Residents' Association, many of who live on the flight path for the airport, said: "The document concludes many thousands of residents are concerned about the damage to the environment more flights could cause."

A Biggin Hill airport spokesman says officials have declined to comment because they have not seen Flightpath's document but the company insists its proposals are modest.

What Biggin Hill wants

  • Biggin Hill Airport Limited, which entered into a lease with airport owners Bromley Council in 1994, wants to expand so it can cater for charter flights.
  • The company hopes 500,000 passengers a year will fly from Biggin Hill to cities across Britain and Europe, if the plans are ever given the go-ahead by Bromley Council.
  • This would mean an additional 8,000 take-offs and landings a year with the airport opening an extra 17 hours a week.
  • In 2001, Bromley Council won a High Court battle to force the airport to keep to the terms of its original lease.
  • BHAL aims to release a masterplan' in the new year, which it hopes will persuade the council to change its mind.