News from Victoria Borwick: “We’ve missed the boat on an Estuary airport” says Victoria Borwick

London Assembly member, Victoria Borwick, has said this morning that the time for building a new airport in the Thames estuary has passed and that the Government should look at quicker alternatives to boost aviation capacity in south east England. Instead she is suggesting that Heathrow and Gatwick are linked by an air-side 15minute high-speed rail line; that a second runway be built at Gatwick and that greater, more efficient use is made of the smaller airports that surround London. Speaking as the Government announced a formal consultation into the idea of building a new multi-runway airport in the Thames Estuary, Mrs Borwick said: “The idea of a Thames Estuary airport is a great one – that’s why they started building one in the early 1970s, but Harold Wilson’s government scrapped it. Decades have now passed with no real long-term thought given to how we accommodate growth in demand for aviation. We need to expand our routes to the emerging economies of the Far East and Latin America. “Plans for an estuary airport at last recognise the need to expand capacity, but it would take decades to build – and we need that capacity now. “That is why I am proposing that Heathrow and Gatwick are turned into a virtual hub airport, linked by high-speed rail, that a second runway is built at Gatwick and that more efficient use is made of London’s “second tier” airports such as Southend and Manston. “I believe that this solution will provide the capacity we need, at a much lower cost and much more quickly than the Estuary idea and that it should be seriously examined as a solution to London air capacity crunch.” ENDS