The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings

THE SOCIETY FOR THE PROTECTION OF ANCIENT BUILDINGS

ESSEX REGIONAL GROUP

Mr T Morgan
Managing Director
BAA Stansted
FREEPOST CL4055
Chelmsford
Essex CM1 3BR
22nd March 2006

Dear Mr Morgan
CONSULTATION ON PROPOSED EXPANSION OF STANSTED AIRPORT (‘STANSTED GENERATION 2’)
Thank you for your letter of 9th December 2005, inviting the views of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB) on your ‘Stansted Generation 2’ plans. Having studied your latest document, however, we can find nothing new and, in addition, the extra information you promised to provide us on your intentions regarding historic buildings (20th February) has failed to materialise. Our concerns remain, therefore, that any expansion of the existing facilities at Stansted Airport would be as ruinous for the historic built environment as we have always maintained.
Introduction
The SPAB, started by William Morris in 1877, is the founding father of the building conservation movement in the United Kingdom. The Society played an important role in developing historic building legislation. Perhaps more significantly its ‘philosophy’ of repair has helped fundamentally shape the UK approach as practised by local authorities, English Heritage, bodies like the National Trust, and building professionals.
Today the Society is an educational, advisory and campaigning voluntary organisation. The largest of the national amenity societies, it is notified of listed building applications for demolition in England and Wales. The Society has a unique record on conservation training, provides a free technical advice line and issues advisory publications.
The Society has just under 9 000 members including those who belong to the separate Mills Section. They comprise leading historic building professionals, whose cumulative expertise is given voluntarily to the Society; as well as homeowners; and those who support the cause. The SPAB Technical Panel, made up of highly experienced architects, surveyors, engineers, builders and others, oversees the Society's technical activities.

1 The proposals for a second runway at Stansted Airport are the greatest threat to historic buildings since the Second World War
The enormity of the damage that would be visited upon historic buildings, monuments, sites and landscapes cannot be overestimated. It is not just about a few extra flights and a new strip of tarmac. Any additional runway would effectively be the equivalent of another airport when all the accompanying services and infrastructure are taken into account. The scale of harm would be maximized by the exceptionally large land-take being sought by BAA in order to generate additional income from its retail activities to help subsidise other, less profitable aspects of its business. The area around Stansted is not a blank canvas but a landscape wonderfully rich in history – in terms of the number and variety of distinctive communities and villages, as well as individual buildings of note. It is particularly ill-suited to further airport expansion.
2 Just as significant as the immediate and direct threat is the dramatic degradation of the ancient and intricate web of villages, hamlets and isolated buildings that characterize the countryside beyond the perimeter of the new runway at Stansted
This largely falls outside the planning system but over time this insidious process can be as destructive as the damage more readily acknowledged by BAA. For example, at Tilty is a church of monastic origin and outstanding architectural quality that would survive outright destruction but be left with its setting irretrievably compromised. At Chickney, a similar fate would befall the tiny church dating from Saxon times. Noise and pollution would jeopardize the continued use and care of many more historic buildings outside the area of immediate land-grab. Additionally, their special interest would be vastly diminished by the new housing, warehousing and transport infrastructure associated with airport expansion, and their historic setting transformed by the desecration of ancient woodlands, gracious parkland, medieval boundary banks, broad byways and narrow enclosed high-banked lanes that are inseparable elements of the landscape in north-west Essex and east Hertfordshire.
3 Development will not only encroach on the historic atmosphere within close sight of Stansted Airport but will erode the character of ancient buildings, hamlets and settlements much further afield
There would be a devastating ripple effect on the heritage much further afield as construction work takes place to accommodate an Essex Heathrow. Massive increases in carbon emissions from aircraft would further threaten centuries-old coastal communities on the frontline of global warming in areas such as North Norfolk. At the same time vast swathes of Essex, Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Suffolk would be blighted forever by progressive urbanisation and airport-induced development. This corner of England would become part of an amorphous, straggling urban-industrial complex.
4 Dozens of older buildings and structures that are in danger from the expansion of Stansted Airport are unlisted but nonetheless from an invaluable part of the overall historic environment
Under the current proposals these would be razed to the ground as whole settlements are literally wiped off the map and swallowed up within the boundary of the sprawling airport. The loss of these buildings, too, will debase the quality of our lives.
5 Under planning law, proposals for the demolition of listed buildings or those seriously affecting scheduled sites are normally only granted consent in cases where the buildings are exceptionally or severely devalued, for example by having become so decayed that they have lost everything of historic interest; and almost never when the building is in sound condition as is the case with the vast majority, if not all, of those identified as at risk near Stansted
The historic environment is a finite resource that cannot be replaced once it is lost. It is incredulous that we have arrived at a situation whereby the destruction of such a rich and storeyed architectural legacy has become a question of ‘the least worst option’ rather than fundamental principles. We know of no case, including the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, where the potential impact on the historic environment has been so drastic. The sheer scale of the possible damage to sound historic buildings in the vicinity of Stansted should be wholly unacceptable, as it would be under any other commercial or private development.
6 It is not possible to expand airport capacity while minimising environmental damage; in particular, the scope for ameliorating the effect on the historic environment by re-erecting a small proportion of the most important buildings is extremely limited, and will always be both technically and philosophically highly problematical
Relocation can take two forms – the most technically difficult, expensive and least common is by undermining the building and lifting it whole to a new site. What is much more usually meant is dismantling the building and re-erecting a replica using a proportion of the materials salvaged from the original. On the face of it this may seem easier with timber-framed buildings, but the loss of historic fabric and identity is inevitable however carefully it is done. Equally important is the removal of the structure from its historic context and setting, inevitably destroying the link between it and its historic site, and in the process seriously detracting from its value and interest. Not only has BAA struggled to tell us how the historic buildings it plans to relocate would be moved, it is also for some reason unable to tell us whether its costings allow for relocating all or only a proportion of the listed buildings it has totalled up under each option, and, if it is only a proportion, how these would be selected (given that they seem to all have the same listing value – Grade II). Additionally, it appears that sites have still not been found for all the buildings dismantled previously to make way for the current terminal complex.
7 The whole basis of the proposals is misconceived – uncontrolled expansion of the Stansted monster simply to allow more unsustainable, low-cost flights
The SPAB believes that there is an extremely poor case for further expansion at Stansted or that this somehow represents ‘progress’. England’s heritage is not some kind of minority interest: more people visit historic buildings in this country each year than attend football matches. Given stable economic conditions, it is quality of life issues and our environment that are of increasing importance in the 21st century. People wish to enjoy our heritage here, at home, rather than have to fly abroad to escape the downward spiral of social and environmental damage. We are very concerned that the value of our architectural heritage to inhabitants and tourists alike is being played down in favour of narrow commercial interests. The much-loved historic structures around Stansted provide a real sense of local identity, as well as homes to many families who have lived in and cherished them for generations. Our historic inheritance should be celebrated and protected, not obliterated. Not only do the plans for a second runway at Stansted Airport constitute the biggest threat to our architectural heritage since the War, entire sub-regions would suffer increased congestion (Stansted trains are already taking up valuable space on our over-clogged railways), rising crime and steep increases in pollution. Aircraft pollution is the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions. The whole tax regime allowing artificially cheap flights is increasingly being called into question. It has been the primary driver behind the rapid growth in holiday flights at Stansted, yet even with this unfair advantage recent figures show signs of a dramatic leveling off. Although the buildings around Stansted have withstood the vicissitudes of war, the worst excesses of 19th- and 20th-century industrialisation, BAA is advocating they be sacrificed for uncertain short-term aviation trends.
8 We believe many of the economic arguments put forward for a second argument at Stansted are weak yet, as the Government has acknowledges, our heritage is ‘England’s greatest asset’
Scores of historic buildings are threatened by the possible expansion of Stansted Airport yet there is little evidence that more aviation will be good for the economy. Research shows that aviation encourages companies and tourists to spend more abroad, and present proposals would exacerbate regional economic imbalance across the UK. North-west Essex already has one of the best employment rates in the country and we take a dim view of the ‘more jobs’ argument continuously parroted by BAA Stansted. Furthermore, a recent State of the Historic Environment Report reveals that 37% of overseas visitors in 1996 specifically mentioned visiting historic sites as an important reason for coming here. We should not, therefore, tolerate such appalling destruction simply to prevent the UK slipping slightly down the international pecking order, or to allow the airport at Stansted to expand as best suits it.

9 We are not ‘anti-aviation’ but believe that this area has made enough sacrifices to its heritage over the past 15 to 20 years to accommodate expansion at Stansted Airport
Compromises have already been made and a line must now be drawn to contain the size of Stansted Airport within tight limits that are truly sustainable. We need only look at the example of Heathrow to see a despairing glimpse of what could result otherwise over the next few decades. ‘To be in Heathrow is to be in the historic bosom of the British Isles, with its pure sweet air of tranquility…in interest it is unapproachable in the land,’ wrote a Mr J Pendle in the 1930’s. The further expansion now planned at Heathrow could soon complete its metamorphosis into a total environmental imbroglio.
10 The historic environment is a finite resource that cannot be replaced once it is lost and three separate public inquiries since the War have concluded that a second runway should never be built at Stansted
The cost of the Stansted proposals to our heritage is extreme and should certainly not be portrayed as an acceptable compromise that somehow balances heritage concerns with aviation. The unthinkable devastation enlargement at Stansted would inflict on our old buildings and landscape is hard to take seriously if our commitment to sustainable development is to have any meaning. It is clearly unsustainable to destroy the architectural heritage that represents centuries of evolution of our communities and cannot be replaced. The most recent public inquiry described the prospect of a two-runway airport at Stansted as ‘an unprecedented and wholly unacceptable major environmental and visual disaster’. The latest proposals by BAA are potentially much more serious for the built and natural environment and should also be rejected. Instead of rehashing old ideas, the airport authority should be thinking more radically about long-term solutions that do not depend on destroying our precious heritage.

Conclusion
The latest consultation document on the possible expansion of Stansted Airport contains nothing new. The plans continue to represent the greatest single threat to historic buildings since the Second World War and fall seriously short of our of real aspirations and expectations for quality of life and the environment in the Third Millennium. Were this level of heritage destruction for profit to be proposed for a country in the Developing World there would be a clamour for our Government’s intervention in order to restrain the unscrupulous regime concerned. That this is not the case at Stansted is perhaps not surprising given the highly inappropriate links that have come to light between BAA, the DfT and some ministers. Too much of our heritage has already been sacrificed to feed the Stansted monster. With the end of the era of unfettered growth in cheap, unsustainable flights now in sight, we look forward with realism and relish to these outdated expansion proposals for Stansted being abandoned once and for all.

Yours sincerely
Douglas Kent BSc(Hons), BSc, MSc, MRICS
Technical Secretary