Business group calls on Government to back Birmingham Airport not Boris Island
01.12.11
Birmingham business leaders have urged the Government to reject plans for a new ‘Boris Island’ airport in the Thames Estuary and turn Birmingham Airport into the UK’s new hub airport instead, the Birmingham Post reports. Birmingham Chamber of Commerce said the city’s airport would be ready to cope with up to 30 million extra passengers once a new runway extension is built.
Speculation that the Government is giving serious consideration to a new airport in the South-east was sparked by George Osborne said that ‘we will explore all the options for maintaining the UK’s aviation hub status with the exception of a third runway at Heathrow’ in his budget speech this week. Some reports interpreted this as a hint that the Government will back proposals for a new airport on an artificial island in the sea North-east of Whitstable, in Kent, which are supported by London mayor Boris Johnson.
The Department for Transport insists that it has made no decision about how air capacity should be improved. A seven-month consultation on the future of the UK’s airports ended in October and Ministers are considering the responses.
The Chamber is pushing for the Government to make more use of Birmingham Airport – and argues that the planned high speed rail line from London to Birmingham, with a station planned at the airport, will make it an attractive solution for passengers from the south.
Michael Ward, president of Birmingham Chamber of Commerce, said: ‘We have excellent transport links to London and once HS2 is built it will take the same amount of time to travel from Euston to Birmingham Airport as it would be to travel from Euston to Edgware Road on the Underground.'
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