Action Briefing Aug 2003 - Sept 2003
	The Newsletter of Birmingham Friends of the Earth

Heathrow Night Flights Ruling Delivered

The Heathrow Night Flights Case has reached the final stage of its journey. The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled on 8th July that the UK Government had violated the residents’ right under Article 13 of the European Convention on Human Rights to an effective remedy before a domestic court.

However, the Grand Chamber also ruled that there had been no violation of the residents’ right to their private and family lives as a result of the Heathrow night flights regime introduced in 1993, overturning the decision of the lower court in October 2001 that the UK had “failed to strike a fair balance between the United Kingdom’s economic well-being and the applicants’ effective enjoyment of their right to respect for their homes and their private and family lives”.

The Court also found that the applicants’ rights had been violated because they had not been able to obtain an effective remedy before the UK domestic courts. The case before the ECHR started following a number of unsuccessful judicial reviews brought by various local authorities whose residents were affected by night flights.

In a powerful dissenting judgment by five of the seventeen judges it was regretted that the Grand Chamber had not taken the opportunity to strengthen the law in relation to environmental human rights. The dissenting judges stated that the decision of the majority seemed “to take a step backwards from previous case law in this area", that it gave “precedence to economic considerations over basic health conditions” and noted that the main judgment was “playing down” people’s “sensitivity to noise” and that this “runs counter to the growing concern over environmental issues, all over Europe and the world.”

Although the decision was clearly a disappointment for all those who wish to see the progressive development of environmental human rights law, the ECHR has given confirmation that Article 8 guarantees the right to a healthy environment and the concept of environmental human rights has at last entered the case law of the ECHR.

Meanwhile, the misery of night flights goes on and the onus is on Government to establish a credible system for controlling aircraft noise in the aviation White Paper due out later this year.

James Botham

The Birmingham Post gets a black mark against it for distributing on the same day the ECHR ruling was handed down a free ‘special edition’ in British Airways bags with not just a brazen front page advertorial about BA’s marketing campaign to highlight its 'great value fares' but also a BA footer ad reading ‘giving Birmingham more choice’ and a photo of a mother and sleeping child below a BA sign with the caption "Hey mum, wake me up. You know how much I've been looking forward to flying BA again." How nauseating can you get?