Richmond Council has called on Heathrow to abandon its bid for a third runway.

The council said Heathrow should instead be focused on working with the aviation industry to reduce pollution and noise for local communities.

The airport is due to challenge February's Court of Appeal ruling against the expansion plan in October at the Supreme Court.

The council said today that there was no logic in the airport persisting with its runway 'fantasy'.

Councillor Gareth Roberts, Leader of Richmond Council, said: "Covid has changed everything. This is a unique period when we are all rethinking traditional assumptions about how we work,travel and grow our economies.

"As local councils we want the industry to get back on its feet. But this won't work without a fundamental rethink about the place of aviation in our society – and indeed where future capacity is most needed.

"Even Heathrow's chief executive has admitted that a new runway would not be needed for years due to the pandemic.

"Yet still the airport and its shareholders press on with the process and the prize of a planning permission for a runway that will never be built.

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"The kind of growth that the third runway plan was predicated on was never sustainable. It is an insult to the people who have for years had their lives blighted by the threat of expansion to persist in keeping the threat alive."

The Court of Appeal ruled in February that the Government had not taken into account the requirements of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change when giving support to Heathrow expansion.

A group of local councils – Hillingdon, Wandsworth, Richmond upon Thames, Hammersmith and Fulham and Windsor and Maidenhead together with the Mayor of London and Greenpeace– had challenged the plans alongside environmental groups Plan B and Friends of the Earth.