A planning application to expand Bristol Airport was rejected by North Somerset Council earlier this week.

The special Planning and Regulatory committee meeting took place on Monday and a motion was proposed by Cllr Steve Hogg (Wrington) to refuse the application.

Following a four-and-a-half-hour debate, councillors voted 18 in support of the motion and seven against, with one abstention.

The airport currently handles just over eight million passengers a year and already has permission to expand to 10 million.

This application was to allow it to expand to 12 million passengers a year.

The committee considered that the detrimental effect of the expansion of the airport on the area and the wider impact on the environment outweighed the narrower benefits to airport expansion.

Public interest

About 200 people turned up on the night at the Town Hall in Weston-super-Mare to watch the committee meeting and hear the public speakers.

It was also live-streamed on the council’s YouTube channel and had more than 4,800 views on the night, with people watching for an average of 27 minutes.

You can watch it again in full below:

Planning and Regulatory Committee meeting Monday 10 Feb 2020 6pm

What happens next?

The decision now needs to be ratified, meaning it needs to be confirmed.

Because the refusal was against the officers’ recommendation and because of the scale of the application, it will be held over until a future meeting of the Planning and Regulatory Committee.

Once the decision has been ratified, the applicant has six months to lodge an appeal which would then be heard at a public inquiry.

   1 Comment