It was almost four short years ago that Liverpool John Lennon Airport (JLA) bosses unveiled their masterplan and vision for the future towards 2030 and 2050.
It was ambitious - a planned investment of around £100 million over 10 years, with proposed expansion of the terminal building, additional car parking, passenger facilities including hotels, retail, food and drink services and a potential extension of the runway.
As January turns into February of 2022, however, those plans have never felt more distant.
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Just a year after those documents were published, Liverpool City Region Combined Authority Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram declared a climate emergency, citing the need to do more to combat climate change and striking the first blow towards any potential expansion plans.
Liverpool City Council made a similar declaration too.
Proposals for LJLA to grow stretch back as far as 2006 when it was said up to 15m passengers could be served by the Speke site by 2030.
After the climate emergency was declared, opposition began to get louder towards expansion as Hale parish councillors described land loss for any airport expansion as “nothing short of an act of vandalism.”
Environmental campaigners also made their views known, with the long running efforts to Save Oglet Shore - a Site of Special Scientific Interest regarded as a site of international importance for the wetland birds living there - gathering pace.
The plans put forward in 2018 by LJLA bosses included references to extension of the Speke Garston Coastal Reserve along the Mersey shoreline and said it would “minimise environmental impacts including reducing the overall area impacted by operational noise, through improvements in aircraft and monitoring technology.”
Those proposals however don’t appear to have appeased local representatives with a distinct change in mood at the Town Hall as just this week, a motion went before Liverpool City Council calling for the complete removal of authority funding to LJLA.
The council holds a 10% stake in the airport.
A highly charged meeting, outside which protesters gathered beforehand, heard Climate Change and Environment Select Committee chair, Cllr Lena Simic say: “Let’s be clear, nobody wants airport expansion” while members of all stripes were keen to express their opposition to potential building at LJLA.
Cllr Anna Key, who proposed the initial motion, told councillors: "You cannot move to a net zero economy by 2030 and expand the airport - that cannot happen."
The council’s cabinet will now undertake an “evidence based review of all council policies and plans relating to green space and the environment” alongside a report “detailing the process for, and consequences of, removing all financial support from LJLA.”
Hopes of pro-expansion feeling now seem to be dwindling further as Stephanie Thompson, who represents Merseyside Greenpeace and Liverpool Friends of the Earth, said while reports were welcome, airport expansion in Speke would be detrimental.
She went on to say that an increase in pollution would have fatal consequences and cited the case of nine-year-old Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, whose death in London in 2020 was said to have had air pollution as a causal factor.
As the world emerges from Covid-19 and the aerospace sector continues to reel from the impact of the pandemic, the possibility of expansion at LJLA now feels as far away as the long haul destinations bosses once dreamt of serving.
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