Ann Gloag and Cllr Iris Johnston to meet in London

A high level delegation from Thanet Council will meet businesswoman Ann Gloag in London on Thursday after she shut Manston Airport. The long-awaited meeting will be led by Thanet council leader Cllr Iris Johnston, together with her deputy Cllr Richard Nicholson, acting council chief executive Madeline Homer, and a legal representative.

It is the crunch get-together that the council, MPs, businesses and organisations, plus former Manston employees and residents has been urging for many weeks. Cllr Johnston said:

“We are going to see Mrs Gloag and to outline the situation as we see it and to hear in person what she has to say. We will ask her for her reasons for declining offers that have been made re the airport and any updates on her decision that led to the closure and loss of jobs. She has treated me with courtesy before when we spoke on the phone and I am glad she had made time in her busy schedule to meet with us.”

Cllr Johnston described the meeting as “critical for the future of the airport.” She added:

“From an economic development point it is vital for Thanet to tell our potential investors that we have our own airport.”

Cllr Johnson said has received a petition of almost 8,000 signatures urging the district council to compulsorily purchase Manston. She added:

“We are exploring all avenues. A CPO is a possibility we will look at but it is a complicated procedure for a local authority and we will need a watertight arrangement with a third party if we are going to proceed this way.”

The American company RiverOak tried to buy the airport; its chief executive Steve DeNardo and fellow directors have reaffirmed their desire to buy the site, and have met with Thanet MPs Sir Roger Gale and Laura Sandys. The company has had three offers turned down by the site’s owners including an offer made on the day of closure which met the asking price.

Cllr Johnson, who is meeting East Kent and Medway authority chief executives and leaders, and Thanet Regeneration Board among others, to keep Manston alive, said expanding the current enterprise zone from the Richborough corridor into Thanet to include Manston would be essential to attract investors to the area. She added:

“We are all trying our very best to ensure that Manston airport has a future.”

She plans to meet with Kent County Council leader Cllr Paul Carter on Friday, July 4, after her meeting with Mrs Gloag.

Kent Online 30th Jun 2014

MPs meet with Manston 'bidders' RiverOak

Thanet MPs, Sir Roger Gale and Laura Sandys, yesterday met with the CEO of RiverOak, Steve DeNardo, and fellow directors who wish to purchase Manston and to re-open the airfield as an operating airport cargo hub.

At the meeting at the House of Commons RiverOak , the company which offered the full £7m asking price for Manston prior to closure but had their offer rejected by the current owner, Mrs Gloag, reaffirmed their desire to buy the airfield and their faith in its future as a significant cargo-handling and possible future passenger centre.

Earlier the RiverOak team met with Aviation Minister Robert Goodwill to outline their proposals and to maintain contact with the UK Government. Further meetings will follow later this week.

Following their discussions with Mr DeNardo The MPs said in a joint statement:

It is clear that RiverOak are committed in their determination to acquire and to operate Manston as an airport, with all the job-creating potential that will flow from that. There are, of course, obstacles to be overcome and much will depend upon the ability of Thanet District Council to bring a Compulsory Purchase Order to a satisfactory conclusion but with cross-party political support that exists we believe that this can be achieved.

Literally and metaphorically we and RiverOak are in this for the long haul. The due processes may take a little time but we intend to realise our objective and to see planes flying from Manston once again.

Thanet Gazette 18th Jun 2014

MP calls for compulsory purchase of Manston airport

North Thanet MP Sir Roger Gale, and South Thanet MP Laura Sandys, say they have told Thanet District Council that it should consider the option of the buy out. Sir Roger said: 

Sir Roger Gale MP

Laura Sandys and I are of the view, which I have reason to understand is shared by the new Labour Leadership of Thanet District Council and by the Conservative Opposition, that with the closure of the airfield the best way to secure a new future for aviation at Manston will be for a Compulsory Order to be placed upon the site which has, at present, planning consent only as an airport. This is detailed in the very recent draft of the local plan so there should be little difficulty in establishing existing use and thus for the local authority to acquire and then perhaps lease out or sell on the site at a sensible price.

Clearly the council will wish to prepare its own study of options based upon legal advice but the opinion that we have been offered is that a bid to place a CPO on the airfield would succeed and that it could be readily funded. If that is so then it ought to be possible to remove the airport from the hands of those who clearly have other objectives and to restore Manston to its rightful place as part of our airport capacity in the South East.

From the work that has already been done we have good reason to believe that those who wish to re-open the airport and have the capacity to do so have every chance of succeeding where others have seemingly chosen to fail and we hope and expect that TDC`s senior officers, acting on instructions from elected members, will take a very robust line. We have to dispel the impression given, arising from discussions that apparently took place with TDC officers earlier in the year, that housing is a "done deal" and that anything other than airport use is on the agenda. As Iris Johnston has made publicly clear, it is not.

The airport closed on Thursday with the loss of 150 direct jobs. Earlier this month the Thanet Gazette revealed talks had taken place between airport representatives and council officers and members about including plans for 1,000 on Manston's Northern Grass in the Local Plan.

Thanet Gazette 19th May 2014

Manston now consulting on NOISE

Ah, the joys of consulting. North-east Kent's favourite airport is obliged to produce a Noise Action Plan for the Government, and we all get to say what we think. As it says on their website:

It is a DEFRA requirement that all UK airports prepare a Noise Action Plan (NAP) based on 2011 noise maps. These regulations are a result of the European Directive commonly known as the Environmental Noise Directive (END).

The NAP considers whether the current noise control measures are sufficient with respect to Manston's operations, and also describes other measures that will be introduced over the coming years to further mitigate the impact of the Airport's operations on the local community.

Bickerdike Allen Partners have been retained by Manston Airport to prepare a Noise Action Plan. In summary this involves the drawing up of a draft NAP for consultation with the Airport's Consultative Committee and the wider public.

The Airport's Draft NAP is now completed and we invite you to view and comment on this document during the 16 week consultation period from 14 March to 4 July 2014. Following consultation the plan will be finalised and submitted to the Government.

So Manston have called in their old pals from Bickerdike Allen Partners to conjure up a report for them. Yes, it's the very same Bickerdike Allen Partners who were caught out under-stating the noise nuisance from Manston the last time Manston hired them.

Have they learned their lessons? Are their facts now crisp, and bang on the nail? Er, no. I only got to page 5 before the red mist rose and obscured the nonsense. Section 1.2.1 - Airport Location starts:

"Manston Airport lies approximately 20 km northeast of Canterbury, Kent and 4 km west of Ramsgate."

View fullsize

Click it to big it.

Here's a map, there's the scale, there's the airport, and there's Ramsgate. Four kilometres? Really? What do you think?

Manston Draft Noise Action Plan 2014

(51 pages, 1.2Mb PDF)

You can download your copy of BAP's fairy story by clicking the picture right.

There is a prize of incalculable worth to the reader who finds and sends in the greatest number of errors, half-truths and truth-omissions.

They're still pushing the line that noise should only be monitored between 11:30pm and 6:30am. And they say that the S106 is effective. And so on.

Read it, carefully, and TAKE PART IN THE CONSULTATION. If you live under or near the flight path, please remember that these people do not have your best interests at heart - it's time to make your voice heard.

KIACC meeting at Manston

KENT INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT CONSULTATIVE COMMITTEE MEETING IN PUBLIC

Friday 27th September 2013 6.30pm in the Airport Departure Lounge

AGENDA

1.       Chairman's welcome & opening

2.       Minutes of last meeting

3.       Matters Arising

4.       Short introduction to the public part of the Meeting by P Twyman, Chair of KIACC

5.       Short presentations from Community Fund recipients

6.       Report from the Airport Management  (Charles Buchanan, CEO Manston Airport)

7.       Thanet District Council (Cllr Hart, Leader of the Council has been invited to speak)

8.     Questions from the public and discussion

---

Members of the public are invited to attend this meeting and will have the opportunity to ask questions after the business of the Committee has been dealt with.

Hear from Thanet District Council and the CEO of the Airport.  Hear about the work of KIACC.  Make your views known.

Agendas will be available at the meeting.

The Constitution of KIACC provides for one meeting a year at which the public can attend.  In recent years, in keeping with our wish to provide a public forum for discussion on airport issues, the Chairman has extended this provision so that the public can not only attend but have the opportunity to speak.  So far nobody has objected to this commonsense approach!

After the formal business of the meeting there will be ample opportunity for members of the public to ask questions and make suggestions (but not, please, long speeches).  It would be helpful in making best use of  time if people with specific questions could let us have them in advance so that they can be grouped together - suggestions to secretary.manstonkiacc@talktalk.net.   And if they are not reached they can be passed on to the appropriate quarter for a response.

We look forward to seeing you.

---

If past performance is anything to go by, we might expect an announcement from Charles Buchanan a few days after he is out of the public spotlight. 

Aha! The cat's out of the bag

Way back in February, NNF sent the Airport Working Committee a response to Rob Hetherington's awful strategy document. And we heard nothing, until 17th June, when we were told (by Charles Hungwe, Senior Democratic Services Officer):

"At the meeting of the Overview & Scrutiny Panel on 28 May 2013, Members set up 5 task & finish groups/working parties for 2013/14. Unfortunately the Airport Working Party was not one of the five."

Quick as a flash, the reply went back to Charles Hungwe and Madeline Homer:

"The obvious question is: which part or parts of TDC now deal with the airport and related issues?"

And we heard nothing. So there was the usual annoying series of increasingly exasperated and ever-escalating requests for a reply and an answer.

Ta-dah! Having escalated the question to Leader and Chief Exec level, a reply arrived on 13th August from Madeline Homer:

"In general the airport remains part of the Economic Development and Regeneration portfolio under the Director of Community Services, including the monitoring of the s.106 agreement."

So there you have it. A mere two months after being asked, Ms Homer tells us that airport matters fall under the remit the Director of Community Services.

The Director of Community Services is Madeline Homer. I suggest it would be sensible to include her in all your correspondence regarding the airport - Madeline.Homer@thanet.gov.uk

Aircraft noise, Council silence

A reader writes...

I don't know if you recall that I contacted NoNightFlights about being sold our house without the estate agents or anyone telling us of the low flying planes over the house?  Well, the house next door to us is being sold by the same estate agents so I thought I would put a poster in our window to alert any potential buyers. 
 
I have just been in touch with Councillor Corinna Huxley and she has suggested that I send you the times I have noted of planes recently. 

• Sunday 19th May 6.24 am
• Monday 20th May 8.35 pm
• Friday 24th May 20.33 pm
• Saturday 25th May 6.29 am
• Sunday 26th May 8.35 pm
• Tuesday 28th May 8.26 pm
• Wednesday 29th May 8.36 pm
• (away on holiday)
• Sunday 16th June 8.32 pm
• Monday 17th June 6.25 am
• Monday 17th June 8.30 pm
• Tuesday 18th June 6.30 am

I wonder if you might be able to help me with information concerning other planes I have heard flying over and around the Ramsgate area very recently.  Councillors have suggested that they are BA training flights and they are flying continually at all hours during the day and night.  It's a constant rumble. 

---

This is rather worrisome

This reader's councillor said to send information to No Night Flights. Another reader explained in the comments to another post that the Deputy Leader said to send information to TDC.  

This neatly illustrates the confusion that has followed the demise of the Airport Working Party. Once upon a time, there was a single point of contact, and a concentration of experience. When the airport breaches its conditions of operation, when people's lives are being ruined, who do they now speak to? Who should they contact?

Two weeks ago, I asked Madeline Homer which part or parts of TDC now dealt with the airport and related matters. 

No reply. 

That's simply not good enough. 

Here's a suggestion: if you have any complaints or comments about the airport or aircraft, send them to Madeline Homer and  the Deputy Leader (Alan Poole) and  No Night Flights. Just copy this into the "To:" line of your email:

 Madeline.Homer@thanet.gov.uk, cllr-alan.poole@thanet.gov.uk, NoNightFlights@gmail.com

and it will go to all three, and it will help us keep track of the impact the airport is having.

No Night Flights won't publish your complaints and comments unless you add something like "For Publication" to your email. 

TDC's Airport Working Party ditched

Even their harshest critics would accept that they were better than nothing, but now the AWP has been disbanded and air-brushed from history.

Why now?

I would have thought that this would be a particularly useful time to have a single, dedicated point of contact between the airport and the Council. Consider:

• the, ahem, burgeoning passenger traffic through the airport,
• British Airways pilots circling over Thanet as they get to grips with the some of the largest passenger aircraft in the world,
• Manston branching out into hosting large open-air events like the recent air show,
• the airport is STILL for sale - even if they're not involved in (or informed of) negotiations, surely TDC would want to be ready to welcome the new owners, because of...
• the need to renegotiate the S106 agreement.

How could this have happened?

Well, fingers are being pointed at Cllr John Worrow and Cllr Mike Harrison. Both went to the Overview & Scrutiny committee meeting on 28th May, when the various working parties for the coming year were set up. As Charles Hungwe (the officer in charge of the committee) wrote to me:

At the meeting of the Overview & Scrutiny Panel on 28 May 2013, Members set up 5 task & finish groups/working parties for 2013/14. Unfortunately the Airport Working Party was not one of the five. The five that were set up are as follows:

Community Safety Partnership Working Party; Corporate Improvement Working Party; Electoral Registration Process Review Task & Finish Group; Pleasurama Site Development Review Task & Finish Group; TDC Artefacts Management Review Task & Finish Group.

The AWP wasn't overlooked, far from it. It was considered and rejected, as it says in the minutes:

Some Members of the Panel said that they were still receiving complaints from residents in their wards about noise levels for aircraft landing outside permitted times. They said that the working party should be re-constituted to continue monitoring the activities at the Manston International Airport. Members expressed the view that the Airport Working Party could review the role of the airport in the proposed Thanet Economic Growth and Regeneration Strategy. Other Members however said that the Kent International Airport Consultative Committee (KIACC) had the formal role of monitoring compliance with policies on flight times.

Councillor Gibson proposed, Councillor Huxley seconded that the Airport Working Party be re-constituted.

When put to vote the motion was LOST.

Hang on a minute

The ruling Labour group has a majority (on paper, at least) on the committee, so how could they lose a vote proposed and seconded by Labour councillors?

Cllr John Worrow (multi-Independent) had stamped out of the meeting, disgusted at the company he was expected to keep, so he wasn't there to vote. And Cllr Mike Harrison (Lab) - who has been on the AWP for years, possibly from its inception - apparently did NOT vote to support the reconstitution of the AWP.

This has infuriated the Labour bigwigs, who are now desperately casting around for some means of re-running the vote and resurrecting the AWP. Given that they made manifesto pledges and ran on a platform of making the airport "resident-friendly", or at least "resident-considerate", many people would say this is the least they can do.

So where does all this leave us? As Charles Hungwe wrote to me, copying Madeline Homer:

You may wish to contact your Ward Councillor and/or Madeline Homer, Director of Community Services, if there are any issues of concern relating to the airport activities that you feel are urgent and require the attention of Council.

So I did. I replied to Charles and Madeline: 

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but have received no reply.

Over to you

Dear Reader, perhaps you might be luckier. Drop Madeline a line - see if you can find out how TDC is proposing to manage its increasingly complex relationship with the airport during this time of uncertainty and transition.

You may also want to write to Cllr Jo Gideon to ask how she thinks TDC will manage without the committee she so ably chaired.

Cllr John Worrow beside himself

Cllr John Worrow

Thanet councillor John Worrow brands ex-colleague "hate criminal "

Independent Thanet councillor John Worrow disrupted a district council meeting tonight when he demanded to know why Conservative Ken Gregory was allowed to sit on the committee.

Mr Gregory had previously received a police caution for telling Mr Worrow "I hope you get Aids," in a malicious voice message.

Mr Worrow called Mr Gregory "a hate criminal" with "no remorse", berating the committee for allowing him to sit in the chamber.

Chairman Jo Gideon called to adjourn the meeting but Mr Worrow flung his agenda to the floor before branding the committee "'king hypocrites," and Mr Gregory a "disgrace" and marching out of the council offices.

The meeting then resumed. [However, there were unfortunate consequences to Cllr Worrow's action.]

thanetgazette 28th May 2013

A hill of beans

"It doesn’t take much to see that the problems of one little airport don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world." - Humphrey Bogart misquoted.

Manston was to be barred from importing beans unless it was properly registered. Manston applied for registration and was refused. A few days later, it was accepted. What happened in those few days? Nobody wants to say.

Last year, Thanet was shocked to the core to learn that Manston might not be allowed to continue importing Kenyan beans at any hour of the day or night it damn well pleases. Nothing to do with limitations on their disgustingly anti-social night flights, of course - this was all due to the mighty European Commission trying to protect us from revolting poisons in our greens.

If you believed half the self-important hype that Manston spouts about its commercial significance, you might have expected the economy of east Kent to have completely collapsed by now. It hasn't. It may be a bit wobbly, but that's not down to ​beans - it's broader than that. ​No, the major effect of this ban would have been that Manston would have lost some, or even all, of its business with its largest remaining customer, Cargolux.

Understandably keen to beat the 1st January 2013 deadline, Manston applied to the Food Standards Agency (FSA) to be registered as a Designated Port of Entry (DPE), the status that would allow it to continue importing the mission-critical beans. On 20th December, the FSA refused their application, as Manston failed to meet the standards laid down in Article 4 of the regulations, which relates to the "Minimum requirements for designated points of entry".

And then the odd stuff starts.

All the necessary bean-balancing and toxin-testing that is required by the FSA isn't done by FSA people, or even Manston staff, but by Council employees - probably Environmental Health Officers (EHOs).

You'll remember that Christmas fell rather awkwardly (or rather well, perhaps) last year, resulting in an unusually large amount of limbo time. Nonetheless, between 20th December and the end of the year, TDC managed to sprinkle enough fairy dust over this problem to make it go away.

Somehow, TDC managed to rearrange the workload for its already over-stretched EHOs, AND cut through swathes of Government and FSA red tape, and PHEW!​ ​ at the eleventh hour saved Manston's bacon. And beans.

​You would have thought that this level and quality of support for local business is something that TDC would be shouting about - ideally, they would be offering the same shoulder-to-shoulder commitment to more local businesses.

But they seem to be surprisingly modest about how much time and effort it took to solve the problem of Manston being unfit to import beans. Or what the ongoing costs might be. Or what the impact on the other services provided by the EHOs might be. Or whether Thanet's EHOs will in future be on 24 hour standy (and rates?) in readiness for a "delayed arrival" which, as we know, can arrive at any time day or night.​