The government has acknowledged that noise levels estimated from air traffic have been miscalculated, broadcaster NOS reports.

Sharon Dijksma, minister for infrastructure and environment, has now reportedly acknowledged that this means the local effects of Schiphol airport and its potential growth must be reassessed.

Leon Adegeest, a member of the HoogOverijssel campaign group and a software specialist, became suspicious when seeing figures that claimed aircraft at 900 metres cause no noise.

Although when a plane is flying low, it causes more noise on land than when it is high, he told the NOS Radio 1: ‘Planes fly very low over Zwolle and I saw that no noise nuisance was predicted. That can’t be right. Even with common sense you can see this. There was something strange going on.’

After the government refused to release calculations, he made his own software and discovered where the infrastructure and environment ministry had gone wrong, using incorrect calculations for the Boeing 737 engine’s noise.

The figures he was analysing came from nuisance from Lelystand Airport but the same model was apparently used to make calculations for Schiphol.

A reanalysis could limit how much the Netherlands’ main airport is permitted to grow from 2020, reports the Financieele Dagblad.