West London residents halt traffic outside DfT Headquarters

20.06.2007
West Lon­don res­i­dents protest­ing about plans to expand Heathrow dra­mat­i­cal­ly stopped traf­fic this morn­ing out­side the Depart­ment for Trans­port (DfT) offices in Cen­tral Lon­don before attempt­ing an inva­sion of the build­ing.

The pro­tes­tors car­ried a bed along Mar­sham Street from the flat of BAA Chief Exec­u­tive Stephen Nel­son (1) to the Depart­ment for Trans­port. In the bed were two fig­ures sym­bol­is­ing the close rela­tion­ship between BAA and the DfT under the slo­gan “DfT in bed with BAA”.

As they crossed Mar­sham Street a dozen res­i­dents halt­ed the traf­fic when they paint­ed a run­way on the road. The res­i­dents, assist­ed by the direct action net­work Plane Stu­pid, then left the bed out­side the DfT offices.

The action fol­lows the rev­e­la­tion last week that the Depart­ment for Trans­port had secret­ly passed key infor­ma­tion sup­port­ing expan­sion of Heathrow to BAA six months before it is due to be pub­lished (2).

Ear­li­er in the year, on March 5th, West Lon­don res­i­dents invad­ed Chatham House and dis­rupt­ed a speech by Trans­port Sec­re­tary Dou­glas Alexan­der.

Long-time West Lon­don res­i­dent Dr John Hunt and mem­ber of the Green Par­ty said, “This action is to expose the unhealth­ily close rela­tion­ship there is between BAA Fer­rovial and the Depart­ment for Trans­port. While BAA and the Depart­ment plot and plan the expan­sion of Heathrow, res­i­dents and local author­i­ties are left in the dark”.

Mag­gie Thor­burn, a long-time West Lon­don res­i­dent, said, “Although I live under the flight path and am affect­ed by the noise of the planes, I took part in today’s action not just because of the increased noise lev­els I would expe­ri­ence if expan­sion went ahead, but also because I firm­ly believe that any fur­ther expan­sion at Heathrow should be ruled out on cli­mate change grounds.”

ENDS

Notes for Edi­tors:

(1). BAA owns a flat for its Chief Exec­u­tive (Flat 905, St Johns, Mar­sham St) about 60 yards from the Depart­ment for Trans­port head­quar­ters at 76 Mar­sham St.

(2). Ear­li­er this month (6th June) the Times www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article1890224.ece revealed that “The Depart­ment for Trans­port has secret­ly passed key infor­ma­tion sup­port­ing the expan­sion to the Span­ish-owned com­pa­ny six months before it is due to be pub­lished in a con­sul­ta­tion doc­u­ment. The depart­ment has also allowed senior BAA offi­cials to influ­ence a series of tests designed to show whether the third run­way would breach lim­its on air pol­lu­tion and noise. The Times has learnt that BAA has a team of 34 peo­ple work­ing with civ­il ser­vants, influ­enc­ing the tests so that they find in favour of build­ing the new run­way. The depart­ment has giv­en BAA a full copy of the pre­lim­i­nary results but is refus­ing to allow any oppo­nents of the expan­sion to see them. Mike Forster, BAA’s head of strat­e­gy for Heathrow, admit­ted at a recent con­fer­ence that he had seen the results and that they were “encour­ag­ing”.” The full report is not expect­ed to be made pub­licly avail­able until just before a con­sul­ta­tion into plans to expand Heathrow, expect­ed in the autumn.