Quality of life


Expanding Stansted beyond its existing single runway would make life intolerable for many tens of thousands of local residents across large parts of Essex, Herts, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire:

  • Local homes, ancient woodlands and unspoilt countryside would need to be bulldozed to make way for another runway, terminal and other paraphernalia required for a two-runway airport.
  • Noise from more and more aircraft flying overhead would affect vast swathes of the region.
  • Night flights would inevitably increase – potentially to twice their current number.
  • Many people currently unaffected by aircraft noise could find themselves suddenly blighted by additional flights and new flight paths.
  • The pressure on the road and rail network from millions of extra passengers travelling to and from the airport would make our roads and rail services intolerably congested.
  • Local air quality would be adversely have affected, both from additional aircraft and from road traffic, with implications for human health and ancient woodlands such as Hatfield Forest.
  • Development pressures to serve an airport bigger than today’s Heathrow would radically alter the character of the region and put pressure on all forms of infrastructure, particularly housing, schools, healthcare and transport.
  • Children at local schools would suffer ever more frequent interruptions to their learning – ‘jet pauses’ – as planes pass overhead.
  • The cumulative effect of all these impacts would have been a dramatic deterioration in the quality of life for tens of thousands of local people.

Campaigning to ensure Stansted Airport's authorised operations stay below harmful limits