Manston, elections, and money

Dennis Franklin is a regular contributor to the IoT Gazette letters page, and sent us this letter to publish in full, just in case the Gazette doesn't...

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I know what follows is lengthy, but I am trying to make some important points about Manston, forthcoming elections, and the use of public money. Also, I feel there have been more pro Manston letters published than against, so I hope space can be found for the following:

Astute readers of the Thanet Gazette letters page will realise I am opposed to Manston airport for 2 reasons, one is I am against social injustice. There are 60,000 households in Thanet, and perhaps 10,000 including some who are not in Thanet, who are effected by low flying aircraft creating air and noise pollution, asthma, pulmonary disease, stress and lower life expectancy.

I do not understand why those in favour of the airport, most of whom are not affected this way, think they can bully those who are, into sacrificing their quality of life, and devaluation of their homes, for what? Most of any new jobs will go to outside experts, and its misguided to think it will increase tourism, it won't, not if 50 to 100 aircraft a day fly low over Ramsgate Harbour, which an economist in the Thanet Gazette predicted it will be needed to make Manston viable!

My second objection is that I do not agree public funds i.e. Income and Council Tax money should be used to subsidise private enterprise! I have been in correspondence with UKIP KCC Councillor Roger Latchford on this, because KCC UKIP Councillor Trevor Shonk tried to conceal from me that there was a proposal to build another railway station 1 mile from one at Minster, and one and a half miles from Ramsgate station, purely for the use of Ann Gloag the owner of Manston Airport, at a cost to the public of £10.5 million! I suggested there are more worthy ways to spend £10.5 million of our money, like redeveloping the disused gas works site in Ramsgate for hundreds of social/affordable homes for a start!

Shamefully more or less every local politician from Laura Sandys to Green (sic) Party councillor Ian Driver, want to use public money to subsidise Manston, why? Because they are electioneering for the forthcoming elections, that’s why! Don't be duped, they intend to cynically abandon and sell out the people who live under the flight paths, who will have their lives ruined by low flying aircraft. And would those people involved with Why Not Manston, please note, every attempt to make Manston profitable has failed, even when EU Jet tried bussing people in from Medway!

I agree with Mike Pearce in his article in last week’s Thanet Gazette, it will stick in the craw of those people who lost their jobs due to KCC cut backs, which also reduced funding for road repairs, schools, libraries, social services for young and old etc, only instead to see millions of pounds of public money being poured into private pockets to try and shore up this obsolete airport! If UKIP have their way and bully KCC into coming up with £200 millions of tax payers money to subsidise Manston airport, just to get elected, it will be a travesty!

Finally, will people stop banging on about Manston's glorious military past? The Cold War ended 25 years ago, and I don't remember seeing a single National Serviceman who didn't loathe every wasted minute of it!

Dennis Franklin, Ramsgate

Trevor wants a Parkway

NEWSFLASH: the real reasons Flybe quit Manston - click HERE

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Kent Online's business editor Trevor Sturgess argues for a Parkway station and high speed rail links, but I think he's missed a few relevant points [my comments are bracketed in italics].

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Flybe’s decision to pull out of Manston is another blow to the airport, especially disappointing at the turn of the year. However attractive we in Kent think Manston is, it seems that not enough people agree.

Flybe’s bold experiment to run flights to Edinburgh, Manchester and Belfast was welcomed, but once again it ends in disappointment. The Manchester service was pulled some time ago, and the Belfast operation was grounded at the end of the summer. Edinburgh has been popular with leisure flyers, students, servicemen and women, and some business folk. But the lack of a day round trip made it inconvenient for business. It was a similar disappointment a few years ago when the Irish-based airline EUjet went belly-up after stretching itself over too many services.

[Business sense, and common sense, meant that Flybe reserved its prime slots at Manchester, Edinburgh and Belfast for the flights that they knew were going to be full. This meant that flights offering same day turnaround were not available for Manston. This is simply another example of success breeding success, and the devil take the hindmost. This is a problem that Manston will always face - they will have to make the most of the scraps and crumbs offered to them, at least to start with.]

So despite the smiles on the ebullient airport CEO Charles Buchanan, Manston has a problem with scheduled passenger services. What message does Flybe's decision send to other would-be operators? Manston has no difficulty with freight - including horses through its new equine centre - and charter flights to holiday places in the summer do pretty well. Car parking is a breeze. Two minutes after unloading the boot, you are in the terminal.

[Manston has the same difficulty with freight as it does with passengers – not enough. The holiday charter flights are seasonal, and few in number. The ease of parking and rapid access to the terminal are both a direct result of Manston being a tiny airport. If Manston does grow in line with its business plan, to the point where it's handling 3 million passengers in 2018, the car park will have to be larger, the walk will be longer, and checking in will be take longer. This is the downside of growth.]

Yet there just doesn’t seem to be a big enough market for scheduled services. Why is this? OK, the downturn has not helped but there must surely be something more fundamental than that. One factor is constrained night-time flying. Thanet council should back the airport's modest demands, despite opposition from some residents. It would, after all, be good for jobs and local people desperately need them. Manston ought to be the solution to over-crowding at Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted. But the Kent terminal with one of the longest runways in the UK has been largely overlooked in official reports, even though senior Kent people are always talking up its credentials.

[The long-standing ban on scheduled night flights is not what prevents the airport being a success. Easyjet went to Southend airport – which doesn't have night flights. London City airport and Belfast airport, both very successful, are shut overnight.

The airport's demands are not modest – they are asking for an unlimited number of flights between 11pm and 7am. The only restriction they are suggesting is between 11:30pm and 6am.

There is no evidence that night flights would be good for jobs – quite the reverse. The 3,000 jobs that Manston says it will create by 2018 is an absurd overestimate. The few hundred jobs that it might create will be easily exceeded by the number of jobs lost in the local tourism industry.

Incidentally, the length of Manston runway is no longer the advantage that it once was, as more efficient modern planes can take off and land in shorter distances.]

Manston’s disadvantage is that it’s more than 60 miles from London. At the eastern end of the UK, It is not surrounded by chimney pots.  But remote airports are not seen as a disadvantage by the likes of Ryanair and EasyJet who bus people miles from a cheap out-of-town terminal.

[Now at last we get to the heart of the matter. Location, location, location.

Ryanair and easyJet can take advantage of "remote airports" if and only if they are the closest airports to the passengers' ultimate destination. East Kent is not a popular destination for air passengers, London is. The huge number of passengers London attracts will inevitably and understandably use the airports that are more convenient.

So Manston loses out as an airport for arrivals, and it also loses out as an airport for departures. Again it's down to location. If you draw a 30 mile circle around any successful passenger airport, you will find that the circle is full of people. If you draw a 30 mile circle around Manston, you will find that 75% of it is full of seawater. There aren't enough people living near enough Manston for it to succeed.

To be a successful passenger airport, you don't need night flights, you need passengers.]

Roads like the Thanet Way are pretty good but potential customers from South East London probably think they are worse than they are. So make it easy.  A Manston Parkway station and dedicated high-speed railway –a “Manston Express?” – would make a huge difference. The Regional Growth Fund allocated some welcome cash for a track upgrade. For a fraction of the cost of a Boris Island or Foster's Grain proposal, upgraded links would transform Manston's image. It would be great to see politicians "getting it" in 2012.

[Manston airport and KCC applied to the Regional Growth Fund for £10 million to build a Parkway station (and a £600,000 sweetener to persuade KLM to use the airport). They were turned down flat. The government decided that the forecast number of passengers did not justify a station, and in any case the spur to Manston airport would slow down the trains on the recently upgraded line to Ramsgate.]

But the sad truth at the moment is that investors - and other scheduled operators - will be wary of committing to a terminal that keeps suffering setbacks.

The Business Blog, Trevor Sturgess 28th Dec 2011

Why Steer Davies Gleave?

This is from the internal KCC document that describes how the contract (to produce the supporting report for the £10m RGF bid) was awarded.

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Outline of Project

Although KCC has previously carried out some outline feasibility work for the proposed Thanet Parkway station (most recently in July 2009), this requires significant updating and development; including more comprehensive passenger demand forecasting and a full feasibility design of the station and car park, if a robust and credible RGF bid is to be prepared. The Government is particularly interested in the job creation potential (both direct and indirect) of proposed schemes, which has not previously been a requirement of traditional transport appraisals. For these reasons, and in light of the challenging timescale for the submission of a first-round RGF bid, it was agreed with the Director of Integrated Strategy and Planning that KCC should invite three technical consultants to tender for this work. [You can read the Invitation to Tender below.]

Reasons for appointing this particular Consultant:

Steer Davies Gleave have been appointed to work on this project primarily due to their proposed approach to the calculation of the additional employment created (directly and indirectly) as a result of the construction of the Thanet Parkway station. This is the key criterion against which RGF bids will be appraised by Government and therefore it is crucial that the consultant's approach in this area is thorough and robust.

The approach proposed by MVA and Jacobs was relatively primitive, relying heavily on consultation with a limited number of local employers (specifically Kent International Airport and Pfizer) to establish the likely number of additional jobs arising from the development of the Parkway station. By contrast, Steer Davies Gleave propose to use their Spatial Economic Impact Model (SpECTRa), which takes as inputs the results of Benefit Cost Analyses of the station and models the structural changes these impacts cause on the local economy via productivity gains and increases in attractiveness. The outputs of the model include changes to wages and prices, to jobs by occupation, to productivity and output, as well as to trade with the rest of the UK, by economic sector.

The SpECTRa model has been approved by the DfT in previous transport scheme appraisals and represents a more comprehensive and sophisticated approach to economic analysis than those proposed by MVA and Jacobs.

Benefits Expected of appointing this Consultant:

The principal benefits expected from appointing Steer Davies Gleave to work on this project are those relating to the quantification of the economic benefits of the Parkway station, as described above. Steer Davies Gleave have extensive experience of preparing business cases and funding bids for rail infrastructure projects, including Liverpool South Parkway and the proposed Stratford Parkway.

The fixed fee of £42,723 proposed by Steer Davies Gleave is considered reasonable. The funding will be made up of contributions from KCC's Sustainable Transport and Transport Policy Teams and Thanet District Council.

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Did you spot any key phrases?

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Dear Reader, you can download your copy of the once-secret KCC Bid Document below, and if you can deduce (or already know) the identities of the airline, or the European hub airport, that are painstakingly blacked out throughout the document, do let me know. Thank you.

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Trickle of funding for Manston Parkway

0.13% of a station

On reflection, I think "trickle" may be over-stating it a bit - this is more of a slight dampening.

There is a document called Growth without Gridlock, which is KCC's grandiose plan for turning the Garden of England into a 24 hour blur of traffic. It includes:

• plans for a Third Thames Crossing (that the local councils at either end of the proposed crossing don't want),
• upgrades to the M2 and M20 (to squeeze more lorries through Dover),
• enhancements to Operation Stack (to provide parking for those lorries),
• upgrades to the high speed rail link to Ramsgate (to speed up the trains),
• and a new Manston Parkway station (to slow them down again).

All in all, as fine a display of joined-up thinking as we're likely to see from KCC any time soon, and a bargain at £1.77 billion. Yes, that's £1,770,000,000. KCC have been roaming the streets with their hands outstretched, seeking funds from every quarter. The latest mark to be suckered into coughing up is the Local Sustainable Transport Fund, which:

"reflects the Government’s core objectives of supporting economic growth by improving the links that move goods and people and meeting its commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions"

KCC were presumably bidding on the strength of promising to move goods and people, as they would be on shakier ground if they were playing the Green Joker on this round. The emissions saved by a few people driving to a Parkway station (rather than making the whole journey by car) will be outweighed by the extra traffic attracted by the enhanced motorway network and increased road freight.

Anyway... the Local Sustainable Transport Fund has already been criticised for being a well-meaning but poorly targetted drop in the ocean. The (relatively) small Fund is spread across four years, and 300 local authorities. KCC's £1.77bn transport strategy has been awarded £2.3 million from the Fund, and that's all they'll get - as Norman Baker said when introducing the LSTF in December 2010, authorities "will only be able to be successful with one bid".

That £2.3m is just under 0.13% of what KCC need for their plan. If this is divvied out equally across the piece, Manston Parkway would see about £13,000 of the £10m projected cost. To put this in perspective - each of the three "car park enforcement staff" (the only jobs created at the proposed station) cost £22,500 per annum.

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Landmark transport scheme receives cash boost

A landmark transport strategy designed to solve ongoing problems with congestion has been awarded £2.3 million from Government. Growth Without Gridlock, which was launched in December, was selected as one of 39 projects in the UK to receive a share of £155m investment. The Kent County Council plan consists of a wish-list of improvements which transport chiefs say would solve some of the problems stunting economic growth in Kent.

It includes the development of a £40m Thanet parkway station serving Manston airport; a £500m scheme to improve traffic flow on the M2 and M20 corridors; and a Third Thames crossing to ease congestion at Dartford. Council leader Paul Carter admitted at the launch of the strategy that "big funding streams" from government were over and the authority had had to identify new revenue streams to raise the £1.8bn needed for improvements to the transport network.

Government selected 39 projects designed to boost economic growth and reduce carbon emissions to receive a share of the Local Sustainable Transport Fund. KCC’s own scheme was chosen as being effective in the two key objectives. Transport minister Norman Baker said he was delighted to be able to fund the strategy:

“It will help build a strong local community while addressing the urgent challenge of climate change. We have empowered local authorities to create packages of sustainable initiatives that are tailored for their local area and this is only the beginning. Even more funding will be announced next summer following a second round of bids.”

An independent panel with expertise in delivering sustainable transport has been appointed to advise ministers on the bids, including the Campaign for Better Transport. Campaigns director at the organisation Richard Hebditch said he was pleased Kent will receive funding.

“We’ve long called for funding for these kinds of programmes, which we know can cut congestion and cut carbon. We’re looking forward to seeing the practical results which I’m sure will make a big difference.”

Other funding sources for Growth Without Gridlock include toll income from the Thames Crossings, port landing charges at Dover and road charges for foreign lorries. Cllr Carter said:

“Together with new freedoms and new local transport powers, these innovative new sources of funding would pay for Kent’s top transport priorities including a Third Thames Crossing and the “bifurcation” of port traffic from Dover along both the M2 and M20 corridors. In difficult economic times, we have no option but to do things differently. All of the schemes identified in Growth without Gridlock will be vital to unlocking new jobs, new business and boosting new economic growth in Kent.”

Medway Council’s Medway Get Active project was refused funding from government under the scheme.

kentnews.co.uk 10 Jul 2011

Council reveals unsuccessful bid to develop Manston services

It's like pulling teeth

Kent County Council has been forced to reveal details of its unsuccessful £10.8 million bid for Government money to develop services for Manston airport.  Campaigners, No Night Flights, challenged KCC's refusal to release details of the Regional Growth Fund (RGF) application.

The county council had to disclose its bid, made with airport owner Infratil, but withheld some commercial details.  KCC and Infratil want £7.7 million towards the cost of building a new "parkway" train station serving the airport and £2 million towards setting up faster rail services between the new station and London.  The second part of the bid is for £600,000 to set up a trial route between Manston and a European "hub" airport - details of which airline and airport were removed from the information published.  The bid also asks for £500,000 to help Infratil turn the first phase of its "master plan" into reality.

In return for the public money Infratil has pledged £7.6 million over 10 years including £100,000 a year to provide a bus service between the airport and new train station.  KCC and Infratil justify the bid, made to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Bis), saying it would help to boost the economy in south east Kent in the wake of Pfizer pulling out.  They claim that it would help Infratil to meet its development aims and increase employment at the airport and in surrounding businesses.  Campaigners say the KCC bid, titled Access to East Kent, demonstrated a poor return on investment.

On the No Night Flights website the group claims that it would equate to £415,384 per job generated by the £10.8 million, adding:

"RGF wants to help make the transition from public sector to private sector jobs. KCC's application was looking for a level of public subsidy that would have embarrassed the British Leyland of old. In the over-crowded sweepstake that is the Grand National economy, the Government decided not to back this particular three-legged donkey."

Campaigner Susan Kennedy, from Ramsgate, said:

"It is unbelievable that in such difficult times KCC has put in for a bid that requires subsidies of millions to create such paltry numbers of jobs."

The bid was turned down in the first phase of applications for the RGF but KCC plans to resubmit it for the second round.

thisiskent.co.uk

A closer look at that bid

The once-secret KCC funding bid

Bureaucracy being what it is, KCC and Infratil were obliged to spell out in detail the brazen cheek of their cash plea. Do please remember that Infratil is a New Zealand-based investment company, and that whatever profits it can (finally) squeeze out of this lemon of an airport will be going straight back to their antipodean investors, still smarting from years of multi-million pound losses.

Infratil Airports Europe Ltd (IAEL) will progress the introduction of a twice-daily direct air service from Manston (Kent International) Airport to [censored] ...  As with any new venture of this nature, however, the proposed service presents significant financial risks to [censored]. It will therefore be necessary for IAEL to underwrite the service for its first three years of operation, representing a total financial commitment of £600,000. Funding for this purpose is being sought through the Regional Growth Fund.

Translation: We would like you to join us in treating Air Anon as a special case, and exempt them from the everyday commercial realities, risks and pressures that apply to everyone else in Thanet and Kent. We were rather hoping the airport owners would cushion them with a generous sweetener, but Infratil are tired of throwing good money after bad, and obviously don't regard this as a good bet. So we would like a handout.

The commencement of the new air service will trigger the employment and training by IAEL of 23 personnel at Manston (Kent International) Airport. This represents a revenue cost over three years of £500,000, which is being sought through the Regional Growth Fund.

Translation: The airport owners aren't even prepared to pay their own staff. So we would like a handout.

IAEL will fully fund a dedicated bus shuttle service for air passengers between the Thanet Parkway Station and Manston (Kent International) Airport. This service would commence immediately following the opening of the Parkway Station and would represent an ongoing annual revenue cost to IAEL of approximately £100,000.

Translation: Because we're planning to build the Parkway station where there are no other public transport links, Infratil are obliged to pick up the tab for chauffeuring their handful of passengers to the airport. We're only mentioning this in the hope that it is construed as Infratil being generously public-spirited, rather than grudgingly accepting commercial necessity.

As part of the first phase of the Manston (Kent International) Airport Master Plan, IAEL will fund the capital cost of a new Airport Southern Approach Road, to reduce interchange times by bus between the Thanet Parkway Station and the airport terminal and to divert airport-related traffic away from Manston Village. The capital cost of the road has initially been estimated as approximately £6.5 million. It is anticipated that the road would be constructed once throughput at the Airport reaches approximately 3 million passengers per annum.

Translation: Infratil "anticipate" a throughput of "approximately" 3 million passengers only in their wildest forecasts and know, in their heart of hearts, that their £6.5m is safe. But the never-to-be-realised promise makes them look good.

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Dear Reader, you can download your copy of the once-secret KCC Bid Document below, and if you can deduce (or already know) the identities of the airline, or the European hub airport, that are painstakingly blacked out throughout the document, do let me know. Thank you.

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KCC's empty begging bowl

In the middle of last year, the Government (in the form of the Department for Business Innovation and Skills - BIS) launched the Regional Growth Fund (RGF). The RGF aims to "support projects and programmes that lever private sector investment creating economic growth and sustainable employment. It aims particularly to help those areas and communities currently dependent on the public sector to make the transition to sustainable private sector-led growth and prosperity".

Across the length and breadth of our proud nation, there was a cacophony of snorts and oinks as snouts were pressed to the trough, greedy for their share of the £1.4 billion on offer. KCC was there, looking for a handout to support their crackpot proposal for a Parkway station at Manston, and some free money for the airport. Here's why they failed:

Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, we can now see what KCC were doing on our behalf (if they had their way, this would still be secret). They were after a total of £10.8 million from the Regional Growth Fund, which breaks down thus:

• £7.7 million towards the capital cost of the Thanet Parkway Station;
• £2 million towards the capital cost of the St Pancras-Ramsgate Journey Time Improvement Scheme (Phase 1);
• £600,000 towards the underwriting of the proposed [censored] air service from Manston (Kent International) Airport to [censored] for three years from summer 2012; and,
• £500,000 towards the delivery of the first phase of the Manston (Kent International) Airport Master Plan, including the training and employment of 11 Airport Fire and Rescue personnel, 9 Airport Security personnel, and 3 Customer Service personnel on a full-time, permanent basis.

The balance of the cost of the Parkway station would be met by Infratil (£560,000) and by borrowing (£1.96m).

The £2m would achieve a journey reduction time of 2 minutes. (Time really is money!)

The £600,000 would be a, er, "sweetener" to persuade an unnamed airline to use the airport.

The £500,000 would be, er, paying Manston to be an airport, and thus returning to them most of the £560k they would have stumped up towards the cost of the station. Nice!

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The RGF application form clearly states:

The Regional Growth Fund seeks to encourage sustainable private sector-led growth.

It appears KCC didn't read the RGF guidelines very carefully, as the application is littered with bullets, aimed squarely at their own feet.

The operation of an air service from Manston (Kent International) Airport to a European hub would be unlikely to happen at all without the Airport subsidising the airline operation. In the current economic environment, the Airport, operating as it does at an annual loss, is not in a position to provide that subsidy to the level that would sufficiently encourage the airline to commence operations.

Translation: No airline can be persuaded to operate out of Manston without being paid. The airport is skint and getting poorer, so can't afford the sweetener. Bang!

The alternative funding sources for underwriting the proposed air service from Manston (Kent International) Airport to [censored] are principally either from the airline, the Airport, or external third parties. In this case, the airline would already be making a contribution through the risk level it would take in covering the operating costs of the service. It should be remembered that airlines have completely mobile assets which they are able to deploy at a wide range of airports on a variety of routes. The support that an airport and its community are able to provide towards the start-up costs and risks, is regularly influential in their route development decisions.

Translation: The airport can't afford to pay the airline, and the airline thinks just being there is risk enough. Airlines are flighty, and need to be lured with cash. Bang!

Manston Airport is operating at a loss, and has done so for many years. Whilst Infratil is prepared to invest in the development of the Airport’s infrastructure, and to cover the existing level of losses together with a contribution to the additional costs for the first years of a new service, it would not be prepared to cover 100% of the route support costs for this new route. In addition, the commitment of the local community that would be illustrated by a successful funding bid will be viewed by the airline as a significant statement of support for the route.

Translation: The airport really is skint, the owners are tired of seeing their money disappear, and aren't even prepared to take a punt on this new airline. Bang!

The RGF application form goes on to say:

In order to ensure good value for money for the taxpayer, it is important that the additional economic benefits associated with supporting a project exceed the costs of Government support.

At this point, KCC reloads and blunders on:

While the Thanet Parkway Station will not require ongoing public support once it is operational, as revenues are forecast to exceed operating costs, the initial capital cost results in the scheme not being commercially viable, namely financially positive. The introduction of twice-daily direct air services between Manston (Kent International) Airport and [censored] will create 23 additional direct jobs at Manston Airport. Along with the three jobs created by the opening of Thanet Parkway station, there are estimated to be 26 direct jobs.

To save your calculator batteries, that's £415,384 per job generated by the £10.8 million. Remember that bit at the beginning of this post, about RGF wanting to help make the transition from public sector to private sector jobs? KCC's application was looking for a level of public subsidy that would have embarrassed the British Leyland of old.
 
In the over-crowded sweepstake that is the Grand National economy, the Government decided not to back this particular three-legged donkey. Quelle surprise!

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Dear Reader, you can download your copy of the once-secret KCC Bid Document below, and if you can deduce (or already know) the identities of the airline, or the European hub airport, that are painstakingly blacked out throughout the document, do let me know. Thank you.

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Airport campaigner's anger over 'secret' bid

Town planners refuse to release details of rail proposal

Campaigners against Manston night flights were left fuming this week after county council officials refused to release details of their bid for a new train station at the airport.  Opponents fear the £10 million proposal is part of ambitious plans by the airport's owners to expand capacity and introduce night flights that would go directly over Herne Bay.

Rosalyn McIntyre, 49, of Beacon Hill, has written to national regulator the Information Commissioner in an attempt to force release of the proposal. Ms McIntyre, an independent member of Canterbury City Council's standards committee, said:

"The council has said releasing the bid document would hurt the commercial interests of the bidder. But the bidder, Kent County Council, is a publicly-funded local authority. Under the Regional Growth Fund, which is where the money will come from, only KCC is in a position to apply for projects in Kent. What information provided to support a bid for public money that will be used to develop a railway station could be so secret?"

The authority insisted the information was commercially confidential because it related to a joint bid between KCC and the private sector. But Ms McIntyre blasted the response. She said:

"There has been no consultation about this bid and no democratic input whatsoever. It is extraordinary that KCC should be allowed to bid for a sum of this size without any democratic mandate."

A new airline passenger service began at the airport on May 26. Domestic carrier Flybe is operating the new route from Manston to Belfast.

HB Times 2nd June 2011 Ed Targett ed.targett@KRNmedia.co.uk

Manston boss and KCC make bid to government for east Kent regeneration cash

The second RGF funding bid

Manston airport's chief executive has called on the Government to recognise east Kent's economic problems when allocating the next round of Regional Growth Fund cash. Charles Buchanan is working with Kent County Council to submit an improved bid after a previous application for £10 million was rejected by the team in charge of distributing the £1.4 billion pot.

The Manston bid was for a parkway railway station serving the airport, an extension of the high-speed rail network between Ramsgate and Ashford, and cash to fund a daily air service to an undisclosed "European hub" airport. But the application was dealt a further blow last week when Lord Michael Heseltine - chairman of the RGF inependent advisory panel - hinted at a roadshow in Margate that Kent bids were at a disadvantage because the county's residents can travel short distances to London for work. Mr Buchanan said:

"The level that Thanet sits on the national indices of deprivation justifies the support we seek. It was made clear to Lord Heseltine at the roadshow that Kent is not entirely wealthy, particularly in the east of the county, and I would hope he has taken that away with him. When dealing with government policy it's normal to have to deal with aggregates and averages; it just depends how local you are developing your policies. The Regional Growth Fund is supposed to support local initiatives, therefore we shouldn't be talking about county averages."

Not a single Kent application was approved following the first round of RGF bids - worth a total of £450m - with only one in the whole of the Kent, Essex and East Sussex Local Enterprise Partnership area being successful. But Mr Buchanan said the Manston bid was submitted before Pfizer announced it will close its site in nearby Sandwich next year, with the expected loss of more than 3,000 jobs. The second round, which aims to allocate the remaining £950m of the fund, opened to bids on April 12 and will close at noon on July 1. Mr Buchanan said:

"We need to take account of the Pfizer situation because the need for economic stimulation in the area is now much greater. We were disappointed not to have been awarded funding in the first round because we thought our bid had merits."

kentnews 20th May 2011

Advisory group recommend no night flights at airport

"No flights to be scheduled between 11pm and 7am at Manston" was the recommendation to the council at a meeting of the Airport Working Party this week.  The suggestion was one of ten agreed during the group's final meeting before yesterday's elections.  The advisory group also recommended that:

• There is a period of one hour at either end of the flying day to allow for late and early arriving flights only
• A penalty be applied to any flights arriving during said one hour periods
• No take offs be allowed between 11pm and 7am
• A schedule of exceptions be prepared to include 'mercy flights' aid flights, medical emergencies, aviation emergencies and coastguard movements
• A new Section 106 Agreement be negotiated within 12 months
• Infratil or any future airport operator be asked to contribute to the cost of a council airport officer and that the requirement is included in a new section 106 Agreement
• The AWP considers undertaking an investigation into the relationship between a possible Parkway Station and the Airport and the need for it
• The council request that airport operators Infratil reviews the operation of the Manston Airport Consultatory Committee
• The council request a quarterly report from Infratil on how they perform with regards the 106 agreement

The recommendation will go before a newly formed overview and scrutiny panel on May 19 following the elections which will in turn make its recommendations to the new cabinet.

thisiskent 6th May 2011