Stop Stansted Expansion campaigners are taking expert advice on mounting a second legal challenge to halt Government plans for increasing airport capacity in the south east.
The campaign group is not revealing its hand, but at issue could be the failure of Transport Secretary, Alistair Darling, to include proper consideration to offshore and estuarial airport options in public consultation.
And in the wake of the decision reached at this month's conference organised by Airport Watch, Friends of the Earth, and the Council for the Preservation of Rural England to back the formation of a national legal committee to seek legal ways of overturning his expansion plans, SSE is giving active consideration to a collaborative approach.
This would integrate the views of other areas, such as those of the Heathrow and Luton campaigners, in a bid to convince Mr Darling that his consultation process is both ''flawed and unjust''.
The moves mirror the successful High Court action brought by SSE and Essex County Council which last year pushed Mr Darling into including Gatwick in his expansion proposals and extending the consultation until June.
Stop Stansted Expansion's deputy chairman, Peter Gowan, said: ''We are looking in several ways at the possibility of judicial reviews, and we have our legal team working on it. The inclusion of offshore sites, for example, would enable the public to examine all the alternatives, as opposed to the present closed doors approach.''
Stop Stansted Expansion's move came at the same time as Uttlesford District Council's convening of a meeting at which four private developers presented proposals for new airports, three of them in the Thames Estuary and the fourth in the Bristol Channel.
A district council spokesman said: ''The Government may have included Gatwick in its second consultation, following the High Court action, but it has not included any off-shore options. The best way for us to find out about them was to invite the developers to present them to us.''
Published Monday, April 21, 2003
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