When Jane Taylor was a child life was good. She lived in a peaceful village on the western outskirts of London. The local kids safely played out together until dusk, bikes were ridden in the streets, and helicopter parenting had not been invented.
She knew her neighbours – and, with a large family, was related to many of them – and she attended the village school, doing well enough to go on to university and a career as an occupational therapist with the NHS.
Taylor has spent most of her 69 years in the village of Sipson, a life which has been blighted by one thing: Heathrow Airport, and its plans to expand.
Sipson, and neighbouring villages Harmondsworth and Harlington, sit in a dismal mile wide strip of land marooned between the M4 motorway and the airport.
‘Hundreds will be made homeless’
For two decades a dwindling band of locals have been fighting off plans to add a third runway to the airport which would mean the destruction of the villages.
“In my view it is criminal to take away people’s homes when we are already in a housing crisis,” says Taylor. “We estimate that 1,700 people will be made homeless.”
This week Chancellor Rachel Reeves reconfirmed the Government’s commitment to building a third runway at Heathrow, arguing that the massive infrastructure project would help revive the UK’s stalling economy and make Britain the “world’s best-connected place to do business.”
And the long-running third runway saga has already cast a dark shadow over the Heathrow villages, tearing apart once-vibrant communities.
Heathrow primary school in Sipson was open between 1877 and 1966
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The needs of Heathrow Airport first began to impact on Taylor when her old primary school was demolished to make way for a new airport access road.
After university Taylor got a job at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital in central London, and by the mid-1980s she was in a position to buy her first home.
Priced out of most of the capital she decided to go home, picking up a one-bedroom terraced house for £36,000.
She has been there ever since, around the corner from her 93 year old mother.
The third runway project really began to take shape in 2006 when the Department for Transport published a report mooting the possibility.
A public consultation was run the following year and in 2009 draft plans were published suggesting the need to compulsorily purchase and demolish approximately 700 homes, mostly in Sipson.
Residents were offered the chance to sell their homes to the airport for their full market price. To sweeten the pill the airport would also pay for the stamp duty on their onward home, and for their moving costs.
“There was a mass exodus,” says Taylor, whose links to Sipson go back to the early 1900s when her great-grandfather moved to the village to work on a local farm.
As long-term residents moved out of Sipson, short term renters moved in. Taylor estimates that around 300 homes have been sold to Heathrow, others have gone to landlords who use them as shared houses and Airbnb.
On her own street three quarters of the homes are rented in some shape or form. “We used to have beautiful gardens in Sipson, but the tenants don’t have any interest,” she says. “The roads and the houses have been decimated.”
Meanwhile, successive governments were tying themselves in knots over the third runway.
In 2010 the coalition government cancelled the plans, and the villagers breathed a collective sigh of relief. But in 2016 the by then Conservative government reinstated it.
Two years later, in 2018, parliament voted 415 to 119 in favour of a third runway. Notable objectors included Keir Starmer.
Then followed a long legal battle. A consortium of environmental campaign groups, London councils, and Sadiq Khan sought a judicial review, and in 2020 the Court of Appeal ruled that proceeding with a third runway would be unlawful as it conflicted with the UK’s commitments to combat climate change.
Undeterred Heathrow bosses appealed to the Supreme Court, which overturned the Court of Appeal’s ruling.
The pandemic, and falling passenger numbers, put the third runway plan on ice, until Reeves began cheerleading for the scheme late last year even though Heathrow does not have planning permission for the runway, a process which will inevitably be time-consuming and fractious.
In the meantime all Taylor, chairwoman of the Harmondsworth and Sipson Residents Association (HASRA), and her neighbours can do is wait.
Taylor’s 93-year-old mother at home in her lounge
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Their problems are exacerbated by a complete lack of certainty. They say Heathrow has never confirmed its precise plans, or which homes would be demolished, leaving them in limbo. A spokesman for Heathrow declined to comment on any aspect of the project.
Taylor fears that if her house is sold off she wouldn’t be left with enough money to buy an alternative home in or around London.
“I suppose I could move to Hull,” she says. She is also concerned about the fate of her elderly mother, as well as a 90-year-old cousin who lives in Harmondsworth.
‘There is nowhere within 20 miles where we will be able to afford’
Carol Dairiam, 57, and her husband Wolfgang Dahm, 69, moved to Sipson 15 years ago. The initial appeal was its value for money.
At the time Dahm was working for a construction company based at Heathrow, and the airport was offering staff a 20 per cent discount on rent on the homes it had been buying up.
At first, Dairiam liked Sipson. It was an easy commute to work in central London for her job as an analyst for an insurance company, and the locals were friendly.
Protesters at the Camp for Climate Action in Sipson near Heathrow Airport (Steve Parsons/PA)
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Its lack of amenities didn’t bother her and in 2013 – at which point the runway project was on hold — she and Dahm decided to take a chance and buy their first home, a three-bedroom semi detached house which cost £315,000.
But, like Taylor, she has also seen Sipson’s community spirit start to fragment in the face of Heathrow’s expansion plans.
As locals moved out short term tenants have moved in. When Dairiam and Dahm were renting their home was inspected twice a year to make sure it was being kept in smart condition.
That policy appears to have ended – gardens are overgrown or filled with rubbish, bin bags litter the streets, and she frequently spots rats scavenging for scraps.
She and Dahm are waiting to see if their home will be demolished to make way for the third runway. “This is the worst case scenario,” she says.
“If it is, we will have to find somewhere else but there is nowhere within a 20 mile radius where we will be able to afford a house like the one we have now.”
‘There is mess and fly tipping everywhere’
Zain and Elena (names have been changed) are equally concerned about their future. The couple moved to Sipson in 2011 for the simple reason that it is possibly the cheapest part of London to live in and they were priced out of other areas.
They rented a one-bedroom maisonette, one of the homes which had been bought up to facilitate future expansion, and at first things were fine.
But by the time they had had two children, now aged 10 and 11, both with special needs, life in the small home became exhausting for the couple, particularly since Elena has disabilities and Zain is the family carer.
Not only was the maisonette way too small for a young family but Zain says that it was badly maintained too. “It had mould, leaks, and it was damp,” he says.
“No one would do anything. I tried the landlord, the council, the MP, I knocked on every single door.”
Happily the couple were recently able to find a larger home, a three-bedroom house still in the village. But over the years they have become increasingly dissatisfied with Sipson itself.
“My partner does not feel comfortable walking at night. It used to be very quiet, but now you don’t know who your neighbours are,” says Zain.
“There is mess and fly tipping everywhere, people who work at Heathrow leave their cars parked all day and so do people who are going on holiday.”
He is frustrated by the Government’s determination to pursue Heathrow expansion, irrespective of the human cost.
“These politicians don’t live in the area, they don’t understand what it is like,” he says. “They themselves are sorted, they don’t give a toss about us.”
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