We gave Bristol Friends of the Earth a small grant to support their campaign against expansion at Bristol airport. Because of the success of the campaign at pointing out the faults in the expansion case, the planning application has been delayed by over 2 years. This doesn’t mean that the airport stopped increasing passengers, but it did prevent it going ahead with plans that would commit it to higher passenger numbers.
In the current financial crisis, airports have seen a steep drop in the number of passengers. The fall at Bristol has been at least 15%, and in fact has been 25% in the past 2 months (compared with the year before). The hope is that falling numbers of passengers will back up the campaign to stop the plans for expansion.
Jeremy, who is still working on the campaign, said “Lush’s support has been invaluable to us – without it we would have had to spend far more time trying to find a source of funds and would have had to curtail the activities which get us a high profile and which dent the airport’s case.
We now have 2500 people on our supporters list, a respected profile with the media, the support of at least 4 MPs (two LD, two Tory), and support from many local councillors. We are working on the business community, who are gradually realising that the expansion of airports is not a panacea for the ills of the economy. We have also set up AirportWatch South West in order to spread our skills out to other airport opposition groups, particularly those in the South West“.
The case against the expansion still continues; to find out more and get involved, please visit their website www.stopbia.com, which is regularly updated with news, presentations and videos.
May 2009
