Guido hears the airports vote has been pencilled in for Monday 25 June – and Chris Grayling faces more trouble over yet another cock-up. DAC Beachcroft, legal advisers to the Heathrow Hub consortium proposing an extended runway at Heathrow, have today indicated that they will challenge the DfT’s National Policy Statement. They say it wrongly calculated the capacity of the extended runway option after a mistake by the Airports Commission (dating back before Grayling was Transport Secretary), thus erroneously finding the 3rd runway option had a higher capacity. This was one of the principal reasons why the extended runway was rejected.

The Planning Act – Section 13 to be specific – allows for a Judicial Review of an NPS in the six weeks after it has been designated, following a vote in parliament. If this was objectively an error of process then it does not look good for Grayling…