THOUSANDS of home-owners around Stansted airport face another decade of uncertainty because of a likely delay to the development of a new runway.

The Essex airport was supposed to gain a second runway by 2012 under a timetable published a year ago in the Government’s aviation White Paper.

But BAA, the airport’s owner, is struggling to find the £2 billion it needs for the first phase of the expansion, in which would Stansted grow to be larger than Heathrow is today.

The delay raises the possibility that Heathrow could be expanded first, with a third runway north of the existing two.

Stansted had been enjoying runaway growth on the back of the boom in low-cost air travel. But the airport’s passenger growth rate halved last year, suggesting that the market for low-cost air travel in the South East is close to being saturated.

Ryanair, which accounts for 60 per cent of flights at Stan-sted, has been unable to sell thousands of “free flights”, for which it asks passengers to pay only taxes and charges.

BAA admits that it will struggle to pay for the new runway unless it is allowed to cross-subsidise it from its profits at Gatwick and Heathrow. But the Civil Aviation Authority has said that Stansted’s expansion should be funded by its own passengers unless there were compelling reasons for a cross-subsidy.

Senior BAA staff have conceded privately that Stansted’s new runway could be delayed until 2015 or even later.

More than 12,000 homes have been blighted by the proposed expansion. They fall outside the area in which BAA is promising to compensate residents. Their owners may be able to recover some losses, estimated at an average of £100,000 per property, under the Land Compensation Act. But the Act would apply only after the runway had opened.

David and Kay Johnson live about 100 yards outside the zone eligible for compensation from BAA. Their 15th-century converted barn is on the edge of the flight path for the proposed new runway and a new link road to the M11 would be built on fields close to their home. They paid £565,000 for their listed home three years ago and believe it should now be worth £750,000.

But Mr Johnson, 60, a retired loss adjuster, said: “We would be lucky to get £500,000 now. The uncertainty is the worst thing. Part of me wishes they would build the runway but BAA wants to keep its options open and leave the threat hanging over us. We could be fighting this for another ten years.”

An internal Department for Transport paper, seen by The Times, states: “It would be difficult to fund an additional runway at Stansted opening in 2012, followed by an additional Heathrow runway opening soon after, say 2015.”

But the White Paper proposed that a Heathrow runway could be built as early as 2015. An enlarged Heathrow, combined with the expansion of Luton, Birmingham and smaller airports, could mean that a second runway at Stansted is not needed. The existing runway handled 21 million passengers last year but is capable of handling more than 40 million.

British Airways is arguing for a new runway at Heathrow as early as possible and has threatened legal action if BAA tries to make Heathrow passengers pay for Stansted’s expansion.

Terry Morgan, the managing director of Stansted, said that it was too early to say whether BAA would be able to pay for the early expansion of Stansted without a cross-subsidy.

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