25th November 2025 The Government has announced its preference for Heathrow’s own expansion plan over the one submitted by the Arora Group. The Heathrow plan is the one which proposes the longest runway and will require the M25 motorway to be sunk into a tunnel. Heathrow says the new runway will increase capacity to 756,000 flights and 150 million passengers a year; it currently serves about 84 million. The government stated that whilst the Heathrow proposal requires more land, it involves the acquisition of fewer houses around the airport than Arora’s plan; this statement is disingenuous as the new runway boundaries will be just a few 10’s of metres from peoples homes and many others will be overflown when they haven’t been before; it is very likely therefore that many hundreds of additional homes will have to be purchased as life will become intolerable otherwise; this is not the picture currently being painted. A further critical note here is the comment that it it’s hoped planning permission will be given by 2029 so residents are stuck in a miserable limbo for another 4 years; this is an intolerable intrusion and burden on peoples lives and mental health. Click here for the BBC News piece on the announcement.

23rd October News today that a decision on which developer will build Heathrow’s third runway is due by the end of November, the transport secretary has confirmed. Two rival bids are under scrutiny: one from Heathrow Airport itself and another from the Arora Group, led by hotel tycoon Surinder Arora. MP for Hayes & Harlington (the district in which the airport sits) is quoted as saying “Heathrow’s expansion is a white elephant”, adding “it is almost like watching HS2 all over again”. Click here for a link to the BBC News piece.

22nd October A statement from the Department for Transport was released today, it “unveils the next steps” of the move towards Heathrow’s expansion. The key point is that they intend to speed the process up so that a final planning decision will be made within the current parliament. Click here for the link to read.

20th October In news that will further strengthen Heathrow Airports case for expansion, it was announced that LHR handled a record 7.4 million passengers in September 2025. Link here.

23rd September The BBC reports that a second runway at Gatwick airport is approved by the government. By the late 2030’s this will result in the airport handling 100,000 flights more than it does now, totaling around 389.000 per year. A government source has described the plans as a “no-brainer for growth,” adding that “it is possible that planes could be taking off from a new full runway at Gatwick before the next general election”, which would mean by 2029. This approval is bad news for the Heathrow villages and their residents as this decision makes expansion at LHR ever more likely.

23rd September A story from the Mail which puts more emphasis on the people and the threatened Heathrow villages themselves.

1st August Heathrow submits ‘shovel-ready’ plans for third runway. The Guardian reports that as expected Heathrow has submitted its plans for a new runway as part of a £50bn investment, as the government said expanding Europe’s largest airport could create 100,000 jobs and drive growth. The 2-mile (3.2km) new runway would cross a diverted M25 and allow more than 750 additional flights a day over London, helping bring the total annual number of passengers to 150 million.

31st July The BBC reports today that Surinder Arora, head of the Arora hotels group has announced he is submitting a Heathrow expansion plan to rival the proposal from the airport’s owners. Arora Group said the “primary benefit” of the plan it submitted to the government was a shorter new runway which would avoid the need to divert the M25 motorway. This proposal seems to leave both Sipson and Harmondsworth in an even worse position than Heathrow’s own plan with little of either surviving.

31st July Heathrow’s ‘grass roots’ community group has been distributing flyers in support of the proposed new runway, as in previous years their claims are preposterous e.g. that 100.000 people locally support the news of expansion hopefully going ahead; this number has no explanation or evidence behind it. In addition, they also claim (as previously) job numbers that are implausibly high by stating that the new runway will result in more jobs than are linked to Heathrow now!! The reality is that short term temporary construction workers would be brought in from outside the area only as required and once up and running the longer term jobs would be minimum wage e.g. retail in terminal and even many operations jobs now have been dumbed down and don’t pay much. Treat this organisation with a large pinch of salt and cynicism.

11th July City AM reports that in typical Heathrow extravagance and oblivious to common sense thinking as always the third runway car park plans alone could be more costly than entire Gatwick expansion. Click here for the story.

7th July City AM reports that the Labour government is exploring how to break Heathrow’s third runway “doom loop” via new parliamentary powers that would fast-track big projects.Ministers are examining whether legislation could be enacted to enable the UK’s biggest hub to bypass parts of the planning process. Click here for story.

22nd April The Telegraph reports that a government climate advisor has racked up an eye watering 40.000 miles in the last year whilst attending environmental conferences presumably to discuss cutting emissions and reduce the use of aviation. Nigel Topping who is a member of Ed Milibands climate change committee accrued these miles whilst traveling across three continents and visiting locations such as Barbados, Saudi Arabia and the US. Moderation is only for the rest of us?!

2nd April The Heathrow shut down/power failure argument rumbles on with both Heathrow and the power suppliers claiming victory and that they were always on top of the incident. It is reported here that Heathrow were warned only days before the March 20th incident that such an event was possible.

22nd March LHR says operations beginning to return to normal but will be many days before the flight/passenger backlog is cleared. Government has ordered an investigation into how the incident happened and what could have done to prevent it. Click here for more information.

21st March Heathrow Airport closed for 24hrs after fire at local power substation forces tough decision to completely shut down operations leaving hundreds of flights and thousands of people in chaos. This event is catastrophic and unprecedented in Heathrow’s history. Click here for link to story.

9th March, 2025 We have come full circle back to the late 2000’s as Heathrow is rumoured to be considering if the new runway could be a short one thus avoiding the cost of placing the M25 motorway into a tunnel. Around 40% of Heathrow’s traffic is smaller aircraft that could use the short runway – click here for story.

21st December, 2024 New owners finalised for LHR as it also announces £2.3 billion in new investment. Thisismoney.co.uk reports that; Heathrow is in talks with the Government about controversial plans for a third runway and has announced a £2.3billion upgrade.

Chief executive Thomas Woldbye wants to boost existing infrastructure -while drumming up support for a third runway. Negotiations have been given a shot in the arm after Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund and a French investment giant took control of the airport this week ending previous uncertainty over its ownership after previous owner Ferrovial announced its intention to sell which led to a lull in lobbying efforts. Click here for link.

5th December, 2024 The Independent reports that Gatwick is now united with Heathrow airport in calling for expansion. Click here to see the article.

29th November 2024 Heathrow Airport CEO urges government to back plans for a third runway or ‘forget it’. At a recent industry conference the Heathrow CEO stated the above elaborating that they weren’t going to invest time and money in the expansion bid without government support. He said: “The plans entail increasing Heathrow’s estate by a size that is larger than Birmingham Airport, with more terminals, hangars, shopping malls and the world’s two largest car parks, in order to increase flight numbers by more than Gatwick currently flies. Link here.

2nd November 2024; MSN.COM re-posts a piece from July explaining that the chief of Airbus had said that the Starmer government should press ahead with approving a new runway at Heathrow stating “Aviation is good for society; it contributes to peace, stability, and the prosperity we need to decarbonise. We welcome every initiative to support aviation,” Airbus chief executive Guillaume Faury told the Sunday Times in an interview. Peace and stability? Who knew????

October 2024; It’s back – the threat of expansion / third runway etc. at Heathrow airport is back on. The new Starmer government is being urged from its own ranks and industry to give the go-ahead. The Civil Engineer magazine reported in September that LHR was ‘looking for partners’ to prepare a new bid for expansion. Heathrow’s own ‘Expansion’ pages on their website have been updated and it would seem that we’re back round to Sipson and Harmondsworth being largely destroyed with listed buildings also on the chopping block and curiously, the A4 road, all 4 lanes of it seems to have disappeared from their artists impression (see below). The image shown on the web pages mentioned above is unusually oriented whereby the left of the graphic is actually north – they have previous form for using these unusual images in poor quality so that the viewer cannot quite make sense of it.