Legal fees and environmental impact modelling have seen cost of paperwork almost double since project was paused in 2020
The cost of the planning application for Heathrow’s third runway is expected to surpass £700m by the time it is submitted next year, according to the airport’s latest estimates.
Heathrow Airport chief communications and sustainability officer Nigel Milton said around £400m had been spent on the planning process before the Grimshaw-designed project was paused in 2020 over legal issues relating to the 2015 Paris climate treaty.
Roughly the same figure will now be spent again before the development consent order (DCO) for the £49bn expansion project is submitted in 2027 or 2028, Milton said, with the final cost expected to be up to £800m.
Speaking at UKREiiF in Leeds last week, Milton said the bulk of the costs are being spent on legal fees, surveying and modelling the project’s traffic and environmental impacts.
“A lot of it is about building up the case of what the impact is going to be and how to present that at the planning process, and a lot of legal fees,” Milton said.
He added: “You have to say what the impact will be of the finished product, and how each of those impacts are going to be minimised… so you can demonstrate to the planning process that the impacts have been mitigated in the best way that they can.
“That is essentially at the heart of whether we get planning permission or not, and preparing that case for a project the size of Heathrow, with the geographical area that is being impacted.”
The airport’s £800m estimate for the cost of the DCO would be lower than the price reported in August last year by The Times, which said the figure could eventually be closer to £1bn.
The privately financed expansion project, which has been in development in various forms since the 1970s, was halted in 2020 after the Court of Appeal ruled that the UK had failed to take its commitments to lower carbon emissions under the Paris Agreement into account.
That decision was overturned later that year but the project remained in limbo due to lower passenger numbers during the pandemic, ongoing environmental concerns and rising construction costs.
It was given new impetus following Labour’s 2024 election victory with the government inviting the airport to submit updated proposals in January 2025.
Two options were put forward, the airport’s own £49bn scheme with a full-length 3.5km third runway and a £25bn scheme designed by Scott Brownrigg for developer Arora Group with a shorter 2.8km runway, with the government opting for the former in November last year.
The higher cost of the airport’s own scheme is partly due to the requirement to reroute part of the M25 through a new road tunnel beneath the airport.
The runway and road tunnel together are expected to cost £21bn, with £12bn to be spent on new terminal infrastructure and a further £16bn on upgrades to the airport’s existing infrastructure.
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