TheRoskill Commission (formally theCommission on the Third London Airport) was aUK Government Commission charged with looking into finding a site for a new airport forLondon. Chaired by High Court judgeSir Eustace Roskill, it sat from 1968 to 1970 and published its report in January 1971.
Since the 1950s, London's primary passenger airport had been atHeathrow, with a second one atGatwick. The Commission's aim was "to enquire into the timing of the need for a four-runway airport to cater for the growth of traffic at existing airports serving the London area, to consider the various alternative sites, and to recommend which site should be selected."[1][2]
Roskill's initial list of 78 sites was reduced to an intermediate list of 29, before detailed consideration of four short-listed locations:
The Commission recommended that a site atCublington nearWing in Buckinghamshire (to the north-west of London) should be developed as London's third airport.
The UK government rejected the Commission's proposal for Cublington, but accepted a dissenting report by a member of the Commission,Colin Buchanan, which recommended that a new airport should be developed at Foulness (later known asMaplin Sands) in Essex.
AnAct of Parliament was passed – theMaplin Development Act 1973 – that paved the way for aThames Estuary Airport at Maplin Sands.[3] However, the airport proposal was shelved after the1973 oil crisis, and plans for a new third airport were replaced by smaller-scale redevelopment ofStansted, a site not short-listed by the Roskill Commission.[4]
In 2012 the UK government established the independentAirports Commission to look again at the future of London's airports.
The members of the seven-man Commission were:[5]
