Hounslow Council’s Heathrow community consultation

This morning Hounslow Council’s launched its community consultation to Make Some Noise Over Heathrow. It will see a questionnaire sent to every one of the borough’s 100,000 households, inviting residents to have their say. It is the biggest consultation ever carried out in the borough.

 Difference between Hounslow approach and Richmond and Hillingdon

Richmond and Hillingdon Councils have both committed to a 2-question referendum on which voters can voice their support for expanding Heathrow airport and seeing an increase in flight numbers. The result will be politically and legally binding on both authorities.

The Hounslow questionnaire also contains the two questions that are being asked by Richmond and Hillingdon to ensure that residents across West London are being asked to voice their thoughts on the same issues.

A community engagement exercise was thought to be a more flexible approach and has allowed Hounslow Council to create a questionnaire with a total of 11 questions. This provides an opportunity for a more in-depth engagement with community opinion and allows the Council to ask questions on the importance of Heathrow to the local economy, seek views on transport improvements and address noise and air quality issues as well the issue of night flights.

 The community engagement exercise will run over a four-week period. This will enable the Council to campaign for a longer period of time, which will hopefully result in a higher response rate thereby increasing the validity of the overall results.

 By covering a wide-range of issues relating to Heathrow, Hounslow Council also hopes to galvanise public support for its position on noise, air quality and night flights.

 Community events in libraries and high streets

 In order to support the Heathrow consultation exercise, a series of roadshows will visit each of the borough’s eleven libraries between 15 April and 16 May, providing an opportunity for residents to get additional copies of the questionnaire and ask any questions around the issue of further expansion at the airport.  The main purpose is to increase participation in the consultation.

Staff will be on hand to proactively ask residents if they have received the consultation document through the door, if they have completed the questionnaire online, or if they would like more hard copies of the document for themselves, family or friends, in order to increase participation.

This exercise by Hounslow will be quantitavely and qualitavely very different from the Richmond & Hillingdon referendum and will usefully produce information about the how local residents feel the trade-off between job and quality of life issues over Heathrow should be managed rather then a yes or no approach. I look forward to seeing Hounslow submitting their data to the Davies Commission.