Liverpool Council funding airport at odds with climate aims, councillor says

An airport spokesman said it "naturally recognises its wider environmental responsibilities"

Liverpool's council must stop funding the city's airport because doing so is "incompatible" with its effort to fight climate change, a councillor has said.

In a motion to the Labour-led council, Green member Anna Key said supporting Liverpool John Lennon Airport (LJLA) was not in line with the authority's climate emergency declaration in 2019.

She also called for opposition to LJLA's "potential future expansion".

An airport spokesman said it had its own plans to be carbon neutral by 2040.

Liverpool City Council said it had a 10% stake in LJLA.

The Local Democracy Reporting Service said in her motion, St Michael's ward councillor Ms Key stated that since 2019 the authority had "begun to develop policies which seek to address the negative impacts of climate change on the city" and aimed to be carbon neutral by 2030.

She said LJLA's plan to expand its business by 2050 included a number of "consequences", such as an increased number of flights, reduced green space and a new road to carry freight and passenger traffic, which were "incompatible with these aims and should be opposed".

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As a result, Ms Key said councillors should request that Mayor Joanne Anderson and the cabinet "remove all financial support" from LJLA and set out "the council's opposition to its masterplan, which sets out the proposals for potential future expansion".

The motion also calls on the council to get planners to "undertake an urgent evidence-based review of all policies relating to green space and the environment... to ensure sufficient policy protections for green belt land are set".

The motion will go before a full council meeting on 26 January.

An LJLA spokesman has previously said that while the timescale for its expansion plans were "likely to slip" as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, they remained "valid".

He said the airport "naturally recognises its wider environmental responsibilities" and had its own plans to reach net carbon zero by 2040, which include the installation of a solar farm to generate about a quarter of LJLA's annual energy needs.

The airport was also "working with airlines, aircraft and engine manufacturers and others" to create "a roadmap for the wider aviation industry to be carbon neutral by 2050", he added.