For four years, Colin Shearn, a 62-year-old retired corporate executive, led the Farnborough Noise Group, a watchdog for locals worried about the operations of Farnborough airport, the UK’s busiest private jet airfield.
Then, one day in August, police came knocking at his door.
Shearn, they claimed in a 92-page document, had conducted an “aggressive and relentless campaign against Farnborough airport”. He was accused of “bombarding” the airport and relevant authorities “with endless questions about air traffic”, while “adopting a belligerent and aggressive style, distorting or misrepresenting a point of view to suit his agenda”.
With just seven days to prepare for a court hearing, he was unable to persuade a judge to deny Surrey police’s application for an antisocial behaviour injunction (asbi) – the successor to the much-derided asbo. He was ordered to stop “causing any harassment, alarm or distress, nuisance or annoyance to any person” in Surrey or Hampshire, or face jail or a fine, or both.
Three weeks later – just as Shearn, its chief critic, was silenced – Farnborough announced that it planned to double weekend flights.
Farnborough is the UK’s oldest aerodrome, and was the site of Britain’s first-ever powered flight. But for most of its 120-year history, it operated as a military and civil aviation research centre. Experimental jets ripped through the skies over Hampshire – but during daylight hours only, and not at all at weekends.
Then, 30 years ago, after the military deemed it surplus to requirements, the government agreed to Farnborough’s redevelopment for business aviation. Initially it began operations in 2000 with 28,000 flights a year, 2,500 of those at weekends and on bank holidays. In 2011, the government overruled the local councillors to increase the number of flights to 50,000 a year with 8,900 at weekends, but maintained weight limits that restricted heavier aircraft from using Farnborough.
Its latest planning application, submitted to Rushmoor borough council last week, gives the airport a ceiling of 70,000 flights a year, including 19,000 at weekends, and allows for heavier aircraft to use the airport.
Farnborough airport says the changes are necessary to meet increased demand for business trips. It claims its proposals will support 4,100 jobs and add £470m to the UK economy by 2040. And it insists its emissions are forecast to meet the UK’s net zero targets.
Many of the airport’s neighbours are sceptical. In October, at a community consultation event in Fleet, a Hampshire commuter town 45 minutes from London, Paul Whelan, from nearby Farnham, said his main concerns were about noise and pollution from the increased air traffic.
“I think some of these plans just sound like a bit much,” he said. “We have noticed a big increase in numbers [of flights]. We’ve lived in our house for the last 40 years. It really makes you look up.”
There are wider concerns. Just this summer, the government’s Climate Change Committee, which advises ministers on net zero goals, reiterated there should be no airport expansion until the aviation industry started to cut its CO2 emissions. Flying made up 7% of the UK’s total carbon emissions last year. And Farnborough’s critics say its emissions profile is particularly egregious.
Jules Crossley, a Rushmoor borough councillor, said: “The whole point of Farnborough’s expansion is to increase the cap on weekend flights.” She claimed that although the airport sold itself as a centre for business aviation, many of its flights were for leisure purposes, and were taken by a small number of wealthy people.
Her claim seems to be supported by research. A recent study by the campaign group Possible found that half of Farnborough flights in the busiest summer months headed to the Mediterranean, rather than business locations, while a quarter of winter flights headed for Alpine destinations. In September a service launched specifically to shuttle dogs and their owners to Dubai and back.
“Business aviation today, that just means private,” Crossley said. “It’s about the convenience of the customer profile, it’s not that every flight is for business reasons … It’s about facilitating the richest people to have a journey with the most convenience possible.”
It is an industry enjoying massive growth. One in 10 departures from UK airports are now private jet flights, according to Possible. Planes using Farnborough airport carry an average of only 2.5 passengers per plane and 40% of aircraft fly empty. This means that, per passenger mile, those passengers are 20–40 times more polluting than a passenger doing the same journey on a commercial flight.
A Farnborough airport spokesperson said flight numbers had increased over two decades due to market growth and displacement from other London airports, and insisted it was “at the forefront of sustainability” as “one of only three UK airports to be certified as level 4+ carbon neutral for those emissions in its direct control”.
The spokesperson conceded that many flights were for leisure, with increases to holiday destinations during the summer and winter holiday seasons, but insisted 80% in total were “either directly or indirectly related” to business matters.
“Whilst Farnborough airport’s emissions per passenger are approximately 10 times greater than those of a commercial airport, its economic output per passenger is substantially higher,” the spokesperson said. “This is consistent with the high proportion of business and corporate flights that use the airport.”
Shearn’s asbi has stopped him engaging directly with Farnborough airport and has forced him to step down as the chair of Farnborough Noise Group.
“I can’t challenge the Civil Aviation Authority any more,” Shearn said. “I can’t write to the CAA. I can’t write to the airport or the Farnborough Aerodrome Consultative Committee any more … It just limits everything I do. I can’t challenge anything, in case I upset or annoy anyone.”
His silencing has turned into a local scandal. Local newspapers have published reports on it, and a former police and crime commissioner for Surrey has written in support of him. Crossley, who also sits on the Farnborough Aerodrome Consultative Committee (FACC), told the Guardian she saw no reason for Shearn’s explicit ban from contacting the group.
“I was speaking to a longstanding member of the FACC … and he and I were agreeing that the other members of the FACC haven’t ever been consulted about this at all, and haven’t even been notified,” Crossley said.
“None of us see Colin as a nuisance. Everybody’s tempers can flare but I have never seen him lose his temper … He informs people. Sometimes there is disagreement about the information, because it is like a lot of science, some of it is not fixed.
“On the whole he’s very knowledgable and I think that frightens people.”
• This article was amended on 3 January 2024 to make clear that it was Surrey police, not Hampshire, that applied for Colin Shearn’s asbi.
