BAA has launched more appeals than Wayne Rooney, says Stop Stansted Expansion campaign group

STOP Stansted Expansion (SSE) has welcomed the decision by the Supreme Court to refuse BAA permission to mount a further appeal against a ruling that it must sell Stansted Airport.

The campaign group said the decision means that BAA has now ‘exhausted the full legal process for appealing against the Competition Commission’s ruling’, a process which has lasted almost two years.

However, a spokesman warned that BAA may try to re-run the legal argument by claiming that circumstances have changed so much since the Competition Commission’s March 2009 ruling that its original conclusions are no longer valid and there is no longer a justification for forcing the sale of Stansted (as well as one of its airports in Scotland).

Indeed, BAA has confirmed that it will continue to make that case to the Commission, and has called on the ruling to be reviewed.

Yet a spokesman for SSE said that BAA is merely delaying matters further “in the hope that market conditions will improve, enabling it to obtain a better price for the sale of Stansted”.

“This may be in BAA’s commercial interests but it would create further uncertainty and would not be in the interests of the local community or airport employees,” added the spokesman.

“SSE therefore calls upon BAA to end the uncertainty by accepting the Supreme Court’s decision and relinquishing control of Stansted without any further delay.”

SSE economics adviser Brian Ross added: “BAA has now launched more appeals than Wayne Rooney with the result that the airport has been in a state of limbo for three years and has been losing customers in droves.

“Prolonging this state of limbo is neither in the interests of the local community nor the airport’s employees.

“BAA should now accept the Supreme Court’s ruling and bring this damaging period of uncertainty to an end.”

BAA said it was “disappointed” by the Supreme Court’s decision not to hear the appeal.

A spokesman added: “We continue to make the case to the Competition Commission that the circumstances in which they found reason to force the sale of airports have changed significantly since early 2009 and should certainly be reviewed in the light of the Government’s policy to rule out new runway capacity in the south east of England.”