Heathrow environmental war gets hotter for BAA

14 Jan 2009

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The struggle against the new runway at London's Heathrow Airport gathered momentum today, even as opposition parties accused Prime Minister Gordon Brown of dithering on the issue.

In what might be described as a land grab with a difference, more than 5,000 people have already signed up to become joint owners of an acre of farmland - an area about half the size of a football field - in the path of the proposed third runway at the airport.

The land is near Sipson, the village that would lose hundreds of homes if the expansion goes through.

The land was bought by Greenpeace and allied environmental groups from under the nose of Heathrow airport owners BAA last week, and put up for joint ownership (See: Heathrow expansion plans under siege).

Early subscribers included Oscar winner Emma Thompson, comedian Alistair McGowan and Conservative party green adviser Zac Goldsmith.

Lawyers for Greenpeace, one of the four owners of the land on the edge of the village of Sipson which will be demolished if permission for the runway is given, said that it had been inundated with requests to become legally recognised ''beneficial owners''.

They said they were receiving nearly 1,000 requests an hour.

It is learnt that the environment groups paid the landowner £20,000 for the plot, considerably less than the market price, but that no money would be asked from the public. ''We do not need to charge people. We are not physically dividing up the land, so people will not physically own a blade of grass,'' said a Greenpeace spokesman.

Co-ownership confers specific property rights to a person even though the legal title of the property may belong to another person.

Pressure is building on the prime minister to cancel the expansion plans, with the major opposition parties as well as a section of his own Labour party opposing them. Even London's Conservative Mayor Boris Johnson is firmly opposed to the plans, calling for a new airport on the Thames estuary instead. But Brown still refuses to commit himself, saying only that a decision would be taken some time this month.

The aviation industry predictably condemned the protests as a public relations stunt. The trade unions concerned also back the third runway, saying it will create 65,000 new jobs.

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