Heathrow's third runway cleared for take-off – but will it boost growth?

Heathrow Airport will finally get its third runway but critics argue a bigger Heathrow isn't the answer to boosting growth.

British Airways Boeing 787 overflying terraced houses on approach to Heathrow. Photo: Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Chancellor Rachel Reeves has confirmed the government would back Heathrow Airport's third runway.
(Image credit: Getty Images)

What's happening with Heathrow's third runway?

The decades-old proposal to increase Heathrow airport’s capacity by building a third runway might finally actually happen. Chancellor Rachel Reeves confirmed on Wednesday the rumours that the government would back the project, as well as announcing other plans for boosting growth. Reeves said Britain could not afford to “duck” such difficult decisions. Heathrow “connects to emerging markets all over the world, opening up new opportunities for growth”, she said, adding that a third runway would make the UK “the world’s best-connected place to do business”. Notably, she failed to confirm expansion proposals at Gatwick and Luton.

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Simon Wilson’s first career was in book publishing, as an economics editor at Routledge, and as a publisher of non-fiction at Random House, specialising in popular business and management books. While there, he published Customers.com, a bestselling classic of the early days of e-commerce, and The Money or Your Life: Reuniting Work and Joy, an inspirational book that helped inspire its publisher towards a post-corporate, portfolio life.   

Since 2001, he has been a writer for MoneyWeek, a financial copywriter, and a long-time contributing editor at The Week. Simon also works as an actor and corporate trainer; current and past clients include investment banks, the Bank of England, the UK government, several Magic Circle law firms and all of the Big Four accountancy firms. He has a degree in languages (German and Spanish) and social and political sciences from the University of Cambridge.