Gatwick Airport Limited Response to Airports Commission Consultation Appendix 16 RPS - Place: Heritage Report GATWICK TECHNICAL REPORT IN RESPONSE TO AIRPORTS COMMISSION CONSULTATION PLACE: Heritage January 2015 Our Ref: OXF8027 RPS 20 Western Avenue Milton Park Abingdon OX14 4SH rpsgroup.com QUALITY MANAGEMENT Prepared by: Mick Rawlings/Robert Masefield Authorised by: David Cowan/Julia Tindale Date: January 2015 Project Number/Document OXF8027/AC Consultation Response Reference: COPYRIGHT © RPS The material presented in this report is confidential. This report has been prepared for the exclusive use of Gatwick Airport Limited and shall not be distributed or made available to any other company or person without the knowledge and written consent of RPS. rpsgroup.com CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ......................................................................................................................... i 1 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................ 1 2 GATWICK .................................................................................................................................. 2 3 HEATHROW NORTH WEST RUNWAY .................................................................................. 15 4 HEATHROW EXTENDED NORTHERN RUNWAY (ENR) ...................................................... 24 5 COMPARATIVE TABLES ....................................................................................................... 31 APPENDICES Appendix 1 Comparison Tables FIGURES Figure 1 Gatwick – N70 (20 event) contour showing heritage assets Figure 2 Heathrow NWR – N70 (20 event) contour showing heritage assets Figure 3 Heathrow ENR – N70 (20 event) contour showing heritage assets rpsgroup.com EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The heritage assessment forms part of the wider Place Assessment which covers a wide range of topics including: Heritage Waste Land Use and Land Cover Agriculture Landscape The current overall Airports Commission (AC) Sustainability Assessment of performance of the three schemes for Place is shown in the Table below: Airports Commission Sustainability Assessment of Heritage Performance AC Gatwick (Best) Heathrow ENR Heathrow NWRR Appraisal (Middle) (Worst) Framework Scores LGW + ENR + LHR NW + Base Mitigation Base Mitigation Base Mitigation Highly Supportive Supportive Neutral Neutral ? Adverse Adverse Adverse Adverse Adverse Adverse Highly Highly Adverse Adverse This executive summary provides details of the key heritage issues that have been identified from the detailed analysis of the AC’s documents and those prepared by Gatwick Airport Limited (Gatwick) and the promoters of the two Heathrow schemes i.e. the Heathrow Extended Northern Runway (ENR) and Heathrow North West Runway (NWR). Those key heritage issues include: There are substantially more designated heritage assets within 2km of the boundary of either of i rpsgroup.com the two Heathrow schemes than is the case at Gatwick; There are very substantially more designated heritage assets potentially affected by aircraft noise as a consequence of both of the Heathrow schemes than at Gatwick. Furthermore, the quality of such assets at Heathrow is significantly greater than at Gatwick; At Heathrow, the potential requirement to uncover and examine large areas of land containing significant archaeological remains poses a risk to the overall delivery programme. This is not the case at Gatwick; and There are inconsistencies and errors within the reports prepared by the AC’s consultants, which result in Gatwick being treated on a less favourable basis in comparison with the two Heathrow schemes. Settings of Heritage Assets We agree with the AC’s Business Case and Sustainability Assessments insofar as they acknowledge that, for any of the proposed schemes, designated heritage assets located outside the land take areas could be adversely affected as a result of changes to their settings. This could be visual change with regard to views of and from the heritage asset, and also changes in ground noise and airborne noise. The assessments undertaken by Jacobs for the AC show clearly that there are substantially more designated heritage assets within 2km of the boundary of either of the two Heathrow schemes than is the case at Gatwick. At Gatwick the land take boundary has been designed specifically to exclude physical impacts on two Scheduled Monuments, although it is acknowledged that there will be impacts on the settings of these two designated heritage assets. Tranquility Where Jacobs have assessed the issue of impacts on designated heritage assets resulting from changes in tranquility, there is a pronounced difference between Gatwick and the two Heathrow schemes with regard to both the quantity and quality of heritage assets that could potentially be affected. However, this has not been given appropriate weight in the overall AC assessment of each scheme. Looking just at the numbers of heritage assets that would fall within the N70 (20 event) noise contour for 2030 (as plotted by Jacobs), this shows that with a second runway at Gatwick there would be a total of 292 designated heritage assets potentially affected. The equivalent figure for the Heathrow North West Runway (NWR) scheme would be 1,954 and for Heathrow Extended Northern Runway (ENR) the figure would be 2,322. Thus the figure for Gatwick is considerably lower than for both of the two Heathrow schemes. However, it is the more qualitative aspects of these potential impacts on heritage assets as a result of changes in tranquility that are perhaps of greater importance. At Gatwick the Jacobs assessment shows that by 2030 a total of two Conservation Areas and two Scheduled Monuments would fall within this N70 (20 event) contour – but no World Heritage Sites or Registered Parks and Gardens. For the Heathrow NWR scheme the equivalent figures would be 18 Conservation Areas, eight Scheduled Monuments, one World Heritage Site and 15 Registered Parks and Gardens. For the ii rpsgroup.com Heathrow ENR scheme the figures would be 21 Conservation Areas, nine Scheduled Monuments, one World Heritage Site and 10 Registered Parks and Gardens. For the Heathrow NWR scheme, heritage assets that would fall within the N70 (20 event) noise contour include the World Heritage Site at Kew Gardens, along other heritage assets including Windsor Castle, Windsor Great Park, Frogmore House and Gardens (including the Royal Mausoleum), Eton College, Richmond Park, Osterly House and Park, Syon House and Park, Buccleuch Gardens, Ditton Park and Ankerwyke Priory. For the Heathrow ENR scheme, the N70 (20 event) noise contour plotted by Jacobs shows that many of the heritage assets identified above would also be affected to a greater or lesser extent, along with Burnham Abbey. At Runnymede Bridge, the Magna Carta Monument, the John F Kennedy Memorial and the Royal Air Force Memorial would be just outside the contour, as would Chiswick House and Gardens. For Gatwick, there are no affected heritage assets that come anywhere near the significance of those identified above. This point is clearly illustrated in Figures 1-3 of this report. Archaeology One issue that the AC may wish to address in more detail is that of the risk to the overall delivery programme which arises from having to deal with buried archaeological remains. The Gatwick submission to the AC contained a detailed appraisal of archaeological potential within the required land take and the surrounding area, whereas the promoters of the two Heathrow schemes merely presented an account of what is identified in the relevant Historic Environment Records. At Heathrow it is clear from previous investigations that any archaeological remains present could be extensive and significant – this is acknowledged in the promoter’s submission for the Heathrow NWR scheme which states that there is potential for the scheme to result in the loss of archaeological remains which would be equivalent to Scheduled Monuments in importance and value. There is a total area of 175 hectares within the land take required for the Heathrow NWR scheme that is likely to contain significant archaeological remains. In 1999, an area of 21 hectares was investigated ahead of the construction of Heathrow Terminal 5 and this was seen within the archaeological community as a major investigation that required the input of a substantial number of archaeologists from within the overall UK workforce. The potential requirement to investigate a similarly rich archaeological landscape across up to 175 hectares of land within the construction programme for the Heathrow NWR scheme must be regarded as a risk to the overall deliverability of the proposed scheme. This is because of the likely unprecedented scale of the excavations and uncertainty regarding the time necessary to complete the work to the required standard. Inconsistencies A number of inconsistencies within the assessments undertaken by Jacobs for the AC are identified in this report and in the Comparison Tables at Appendix 1. One of the more significant inconsistencies with regard to Gatwick is that the impact on one of the Scheduled Monuments outside the land take boundary has been assessed by Jacobs as being of Very Large significance after mitigation, whereas without mitigation the impact had been assessed (by Jacobs) as being of Large significance. This increase in impact significance has not been iii rpsgroup.com explained. There are other situations within the Jacobs