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Aviation Strategy: An update

4th December, 2019

In April, AEF responded to the first part of the Aviation Strategy consultation: Annex A. This proposed that the Government should be given powers to force through airspace changes in cases where airports had not pursued changes which the Government considered necessary to deliver its wider airspace modernisation programme. In our response, we set out our opposition to the proposal on the basis that it precluded meaningful community engagement about when and whether airspace changes were necessary.

In October, the Government published its decision on Annex A, namely to take forward its original proposals with some modifications.

We responded to the main Aviation Strategy consultation in June this year. The Government has delayed the Strategy until 2020, as a result of the election timetable, and a commitment to further public consultation (now likely to be published early next year) on aviation and climate change in light of the publication of new advice from the Committee on Climate Change on aviation and net zero. AEF has argued that the draft strategy, which is strongly supportive of aviation growth, is fundamentally incompatible with achieving the UK’s climate change commitments.