Heathrow Expansion: Eighty years of Bad Decisions

Heathrow destruction 1944

In 1939, at the beginning of WWII there were 351 people living in the hamlet of Heathrow. Some went off to serve in the Armed Forces, but the majority stayed to do their “bit” for the war effort by producing fruit and vegetables to sell at London’s Covent Garden market. For the patriotic farmers of Heathrow it came as a shock when on the 2 May 1944 a letter dropped through their letter boxes to say their land was being requisitioned and they had two months to pack up their homes, outbuildings, livestock, and, leaving their growing crops in the fields, find somewhere else to live.[1] The letter was from the Air Ministry and was in response to a decision made at the wartime coalition’s Cabinet meeting on 10 April 1944 when the Ministers had approved the “sterilisation” of the whole of Harmondsworth for the development of an airport.[2] However, just before D-day, with manpower and money in short supply, the Government could not afford to build more than three runways. The airport was to be built in stages. Stage one would be to requisition land south of the Bath Road (A4) which would completely remove Heathrow.

BAD DECISION NUMBER 1

The decision to fix Britain’s first international civil airport at Heathrow had first been muted by Lord Abercrombie who was commissioned to produce a Greater London Plan for post-war London. With the growth of air transport he knew that a civil airport would be needed after the war and he suggested ten possible sites around London. All of these existing airports were surrounded by housing estates and not expandable. The only leading contender was the Fairey Airfield at Heathrow, but there were many objections. Sir Richard Fairey did not want to give up his airfield. The Ministry of Agriculture did not want to bury the land, which, in Abercrombie’s plan, was described as “… a soil fit to be ranked with the world’s very best – a high-class market gardening and orchard soil, also growing fine grass and ordinary farm crops.”[3] It was not until just before D-day in 1944 that the Air Ministry began to construct the first stage by building three runways which would be completed by May 1946 at a cost of £3.8m. This stage would concrete over the grass Fairey airfield and all the Heathrow farms.

Stage 1 Airport Layout

Two years later on 10 January 1946, even before the airport was complete, Atlee’s post-war Cabinet meeting discussed a memorandum put forward by the Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs, Viscount Addison.[4] It proposed the establishment of Britain’s main international airport at Heathrow. He said the site of the airport was chosen after prolonged survey of the London area and it was considered to be the only suitable location. It will be necessary to acquire a large tract of land to the north of the Bath Road as well as a number of areas adjacent to the present site. The total cost of acquisition of 4,219 acres will be £7m. About 170 houses would have to be demolished in the area south of the Bath Road as well as a substantial proportion of the 1026 houses in the area north of this road. Also there would need to be “sterilisation” of further land on which building would be “controlled”. The airport was to be called “London Airport” and the name Heathrow discarded. Estimated total cost of the airport, including rail and road construction, was £30 million, but he was unable to estimate how much revenue the airport would generate. Bizarrely the Minister was also considering leasing some of the “sterilised” area of land, and even the land between the runways, to market gardeners. Obviously not considering what aircraft engine emissions would do to the crops or the environment. Estimated use of the airport when two runways were available would be 500 flights a day in normal weather. Total passengers per day would be 8500 of whom 1020 would travel in peak hour. The number of passenger movements per day for the extended airport was “guessed” at 12,000 to 15,000.

BAD DECISION NUMBER 2

During the Cabinet meeting the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Hugh Dalton, accepted the need for an international airport at Heathrow but was concerned about the expenditure involved, and was not convinced that it was necessary at this stage to acquire land north of the Bath Road.[5] He strongly urged that the new enlarged scheme be postponed until 1950. Even though 2650 acres had already been destroyed and concreted, he proposed there should be a discussion about finding a new site for the airport where houses and valuable agricultural land would not be lost. The Minster of Town and Country Planning, Mr. F. Marshall, countered this by saying that all previous experience had shown the advisability of acquiring ample land in order to allow for unforeseen developments, and that unless the land was acquired now it was impossible to plan the development of the main roads in the neighbourhood. The Cabinet gave their approval for the development of the civil London Airport at Heathrow, which would be spread over the next eight years. [6]

Full airport plan proposed 1946

The civil airport opened in 1946. The original Fairey Hanger was used as a fire station, and ex-army tents were erected alongside the A4 as terminal buildings. The next phase of the development, which was to extend the existing runways, started in 1948 when more land to the south of the Bath Road was requisitioned. The Three Magpies public house on the Bath Road(A4) lost the remains of its six acres of land. The farms of the hamlet of Longford were requisition leaving so little agricultural land that farming was not viable. Only Perry Oaks sewage works remained. A further round of land requisition to the north of the Bath Road in 1960 for the building of a spur road from the M4 to the central airport buildings involved the demolition of the Old Magpies on the A4 and the removal of the farmland in Sipson. However as planes got bigger and passenger numbers increased there was still a need for a larger airport.

BAD DECISION NUMBER 3

The Roskill Commission was set up by the Government in 1968 to look into finding a site for a third London airport. London already had Heathrow and Gatwick and now there was a requirement for a four-runway airport. The Commission published its report in January 1971 and after initially considering 78 sites they recommended Cublington in Buckinghamshire as a suitable site. The Government rejected this suggestion and chose another site from the Commission’s short list which was Maplin Sands, Foulness Island, on the Thames Estuary. An Act of Parliament in 1973 paved the way for this development, but this was shelved after Labour came to power in July 1974. Instead a small-scale redevelopment of Stansted airport in Essex was agreed even though this was not a site short-listed by the Roskill Commission.[7]

BAD DECISION NUMBER 4

In 1991 the Transport Secretary, Malcolm Rifkind, promised a wide public consultation on the building of a third runway at Heathrow.[8] It started a wave of protest from local councils in Middlesex and Buckinghamshire, and local residents. [9] At the same time there were also suggestions that a fifth terminal could be built on the land then occupied by the Perry Oaks sewage works. The Middlesex Council were not happy about the loss of the sewage facility, and concerns were expressed by the Buckinghamshire County Council (on whose border it stood) about the increased noise and pollution of planes flying over the county.[10] All protesters were relieved when in October 1993 Heathrow Airport Ltd community relations manager, Jon Philipps, said Heathrow had no plans for a third runway as building a fifth terminal did not require another runway.[11]

BAD DECISION NUMBER 5

However in March 1994 the Department of Transport was holding exhibitions and public meetings about the possibility of building a third runway for completion by 2010. They leafletted all the homes in Harmondsworth and held exhibitions and public meetings in Harlington, West Drayton, Sipson, Uxbridge, Stanwell and Harmondsworth.[12] The preliminary design for the expansion would have removed the hamlet of Sipson, on the north side of the A4, and most of Harmondsworth. However in April 1994 at a meeting of the Hillingdon Council, whilst the public enquiry was still in progress, a copy of a letter from Heathrow Airport Limited was circulated. It read, “I can state categorically that at no stage has either Heathrow Airport Limited, or its parent company BAA plc given evidence to the RUCATSE (Runway Capacity To serve the South East) inquiry indicating support for another runway at Heathrow. The airport needs extra terminal capacity rather than runway capacity.” This letter was signed by Jenny Bradley, director of public affairs at Heathrow Airport Limited.[13] It was not until November 2003 that the government announced that there would be no third runway in the “short term” because to do so would break European pollution laws.[14] However, despite all the public enquiries and the protests from local councils and other public bodies, the fifth terminal was built and opened in 2008 which resulted in a subsequent increase in the number of flights from Heathrow airport.

BAD DECISION NUMBER 6

In 2012 the UK Government established an independent Airports Commission to look again at the future of London’s airports. The 2015 final report of this Commission concluded that Heathrow Airport required a new northwest runway.[15] On 25 June 2018 the House of Commons voted to adopt this recommendation. This time the plan was to demolish the hamlet of Longford on the western edge of the airport, and to extend the runway over the M25 with the motorway disappearing into a tunnel. The Colne River would also be placed in an underground culvert. The hamlet of Sipson would survive but would be so close to the third runway that life in any of the houses would be unbearable. The timetable for the construction was to begin in 2021, when planning consent would be sought from the various local councils, and then construction would begin in 2023. Fate intervened with the schedule in the shape of the pandemic of 2020, when air travel was severely reduced and extra airport facilities were not needed. All talk of building a third runway was quietly dropped, but the residents of the parish of Harmondsworth and its hamlets of Sipson and Longford were left, once more, in limbo with the threat of demolition postponed but not removed. After a change of Government, in January 2025 the new Administration revised the prospect of a third runway and once more the protests began. Successive governments with their short-term thinking and procrastination have blighted Harmondsworth parish for eighty years. The constant threat of further airport expansion, the insecurity of tenure, and uncertainty for the future, has caused a slow decline in the number of long-standing families staying in the parish. Speculators have moved in to buy up property, letting them out on short-term leases, or turning them into houses of multiple occupancy. Some of the many ancient Grade II listed buildings have been left unoccupied and decaying. If the voice of the 1946 Minister of Town and Country Planning had been heard, and sufficient land purchased at the outset for future development of the airport, it might have avoided the prolonged indecision and decades of controversy. Meanwhile the residents of Longford, Sipson and Harmondsworth are in limbo. They have fought hard over decades to preserve their pretty villages that have survived since the Saxons built settlements there. These once peaceful rural agricultural villages with over twenty listed buildings are once again facing an uncertain future.

For the story of what will be lost under the Third Runway read:

‘Longford: A village in Limbo’ by Wendy Tibbitts.

[1] Sherwood, Philip. Heathrow: 2000 years of history, (Stroud, 1999)

[2] The National Archives CAB 66/48/39

[3] Stamp, L.Dudley, ‘Land Classification and Agriculture’, in Abercrombie (ed.), Greater London Plan 1944. (London, 1945),p.87

[4] The National Archives. CAB 129/6/4 5 January 1946

[5] National Archives CAB 128/5/4

[6] The National Archives' reference CAB 66/48/39 April 1944

[7] Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roskill_Commission#

[8] Middlesex Chronicle - Thursday 10 January 1991

[9] Harefield Gazette - Wednesday 25 March 1992

[10] Bucks Advertiser & Aylesbury News - Friday 15 June 2001

[11] Hayes & Harlington Gazette - Wednesday 20 October 1993

[12] Uxbridge & W. Drayton Gazette - Wednesday 16 March 1994

[13] Uxbridge & W. Drayton Gazette - Wednesday 27 April 1994

[14] Wolverhampton Express and Star - Saturday 29 November 2003

[15] Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airports_Commission