St Clair and Luddenham residents slam Western Sydney Airport planning process

Residents in Sydney’s west – set to live under the controversial flight paths for the new Western Sydney Airport – say too many of their questions remain unanswered. See their concerns.

Residents set to face the full force of planes flying overhead to and from the soon-to-be-completed Western Sydney Airport say they’ve been neglected in the project’s planning stages –with too many of their questions remaining unanswered.

Residents of Penrith suburbs St Clair and Luddenham claim lacklustre attempts at engaging and informing their communities in airport planning have left significant gaps in locals’ understanding of the multibillion-dollar project, leaving them “locked out to a bleak future”.

With the end of the runway right on their doorstep, residents of Luddenham will be the community closest to Western Sydney International Airport.

However, despite this neighbouring proximity, no community information sessions have been held in the village, and according to a local action group “too many locals still don’t know what’s going on”.

Members of Luddenham Progress Association believe relevant departments are more interested in “ticking a box” than keeping residents informed and engaging in meaningful communication.

Group member Catherine Wong says as a young person with tertiary qualifications, she spent hours in the library struggling to make sense of the draft environmental impact statement.

Members of Luddenham Progress Association next to the future airport

“I think there’s been a big stuff up on informing the community, its been sort of a tick a box exercise to so the government can say ‘oh we’ve sought feedback and submissions’ but really when you ask people a lot of them don’t know about it”, Ms Wong said.

“We have a lot of people here who English is their second language or they don't have internet and don’t know how to use technology, they’ve had no opportunity to digest it [the draft environmental impact statement] because they haven't seen it, they can't comment and form an opinion on something they don’t know and don’t understand.”

Carolyn Wong

Fellow member Carolyn Wong says information meetings should have been held in the Luddenham vicinity with a hard copy of the draft environmental impact statement on display at the community centre for those less digitally literate.

“We didn’t get a meeting in Luddenham, there was one in Warragamba, what we had here was two people in a pop up stall on a Sunday morning when a lot of our elderly residents are at church,” Ms Wong said.

“Different people have very different ideas because the information isn't clear and has not been disseminated clearly, if you talk to 10 different people you're going to have 10 different ideas about what is happening because its just not clear.”

Similar frustrations are shared in nearby suburb St Clair, where only two information sessions were held for the 19,942 people living there, a lack of effort which resident Ken Mott describes as “either a glaring and unforgiveable oversight or a deliberate tactic to ensure residents are unaware”.

Ken and Cheryl Mott in their St Clair backyard.

Furthermore publicly available records of meetings held by the government’s Forum on Western Airport — a dedicated “communication consultation group” known as FoWSA — reveal St Clair was all but left out of these community consultation meetings.

Ironically the first time St Clair was mentioned at all in the forums was in November 2023, when Mayor Todd Carney raised concerns about low awareness in the suburb.

Before then, there had been no questions or concerns raised on behalf of locals by Penrith Council as indicated in meeting records dating back to 2017.

According to FoWSA’s terms of reference, members responsibilities were to inform their communities about airport development based on what was heard in meetings and to “proactively identify and raise issues, queries and submissions from their local communities.”

However there is little evidence to indicate how these responsibilities were being enforced.

A spokesman for the Department of Infrastructure did not answer the Penrith Press’ questions on how the FoWSA’s effectiveness was measured and how their terms of reference were enforced.

Nor did they respond to requests to view the program’s annual report, which was said to contain analysis of the program’s effectiveness.

The spokesman said “FoWSA was is a stakeholder engagement forum, providing for the exchange of information and ideas” and was not “a program with enforcement procedures”.

Western Sydney International Airport, completion on the surface construction of WSI’s runway. Photo: Supplied

St Clair resident Clare Cochrane wrote in her submission to the EIS that “as a communication channel FoWSA fundamentally did not work”, noting members “were never asked to circulate or report on how and where they were communicating with residents and businesses they were meant to provide a conduit for”.

In her submission Ms Cochrane asked “how two last-minute Information Stalls which — attended by 300 people in total — are meant to equate to meaningful consultation” stating through the airport’s attitude toward St Clair has been “one of avoidance”.

Western Sydney International Airport, completion on the surface construction of WSI’s runway. Photo: Supplied,,

“Representatives from FoWSA should have actively been engaged to represent these areas such as St Clair, this would have ensured that several decades later we are not being locked out to face a bleak future,” Ms Cochrane said.

“There has been a strong sense in the community, due to lack of prior engagement or any form of communication that this is something that will just happen to us without any regard or meaningful discussion.”

When approached for comment a spokesman for Penrith Council said the meeting minutes from FoWSA was not a “comprehensive record of discussion ”and that Penrith City Council “continues to make representations for our community’s interest in a variety of forums, not just FOWSA” with “long-term advocacy focused on getting the most out of the airport while minimising the impacts on our community”.