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

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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.

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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. 

Agenda for Public KIACC meeting

KENT INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT CONSULTATIVE COMMITTEE

MEETING IN PUBLIC - in the Airport Departure Lounge

Friday 30th November 2012 6.30pm

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 - a presentation on the airport and its future (Charles Buchanan, CEO Manston Airport)
7. Thanet District Council – an update on the Council's position on the airport and its development; the work of the Airport Working Party; and views on the future (Cllr Hart, Leader of the Council has been invited to speak)
8. Questions from the public and discussion

Labour denies night flight U-turn

For myself, I think the idea of a "whipped" vote (when members are formally ordered to toe the party line) is an affront to democracy. Each councillor's first duty is to the residents of their ward, and if that conflicts with party policy, then the residents' interests should win every time.

That said, there is no practical way of telling whether a vote has been informally whipped, with the usual mix of sticks and carrots. And there's always (thankfully) some bloody-minded/ruggedly independent individuals who simply won't do what they're told.

Finally, I do wish politicians wouldn't say things like "People will have to trust us" - it's guaranteed to raise both chuckles and hackles.

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Thanet Labour leader Clive Hart has denied a U-turn on his party's pre-election anti night-flight pledge.

Manston airport's owner Infratil has revealed plans for up to eight movements a night, in an application submitted to Thanet council last week. That will kick-start 12 weeks of public consultation on the proposals, which if approved would overturn the current ban on scheduled aircraft landing or taking off after 11pm or before 7am.

In the run up to May's local elections the district's Labour party said that it would unanimously oppose night flights from Manston. After the election, which left Thanet council hung, Labour claimed that its no to night flights policy had helped swing the vote in the Nethercourt area of Ramsgate, which lies under one of the airport's flight paths.

This week, in a statement responding to Infratil's submission, Mr Hart said his members will be giving their own views during the consultation. He said:

"Over the coming weeks and months members of the Labour group will scrutinise the proposed night-flying document carefully and thoroughly. Our district councillors will then make their individual views known at the appropriate points in the process, having taken account of all the information available."

The Conservatives already guaranteed an "unwhipped" free vote for their group members.

The latest night flight policy proposal was submitted to Thanet council by Infratil last Thursday. The proposal's include an aircraft noise assessment report and an economic assessment explaining the implications of the proposal. This application follows on from previous proposals for night-time flying which were submitted to the council by the airport in September 2010. Mr Hart has denied that the party's most recent statement is at odds with their original campaign pledge. He said:

"It would be foolish to say anything about it when we could be barred from speaking on any possible future planing [sic] application, and that is the situation we are in. We haven't gone back on any of our pledges. People can think what they like, for me to say anything else won't do anybody any favours. I would bar myself from taking part in the debate. People will have to trust us."

Council leader Bob Bayford said:

"I definitely think that a free vote is the right way to go, which is what our policy has always been. I am not sure how people, who voted Labour on the pledge that they will be against night flights, will feel about Labour's recent statement."

The council will now seek an independent assessment of the proposals and technical reports by an external company before public consultation on the proposal can begin. Mr Bayford said:

"We know this is a hugely important issue, especially for those living under the flight path, so will be providing a minimum consultation period of 12 weeks for people to have their say. I'd like to encourage everyone with a view to ensure they take the time to participate."

The latest proposal details plans for an average of eight scheduled flights a night. Scheduled night flight are currently prohibited under the airport's agreement with the council. A start date for a full consultation will be announced when an independent report is completed.

Paul Twyman, the independent chairman of the Kent International Airport Consultative Committee, said the committee was in favour of the development of the airport, subject to satisfactory environmental controls. He added:

"The key issue is whether the proposals put to the council take proper account of the effect on the environment, and how that balances with the employment and other economic benefits. It is important that the public consultation takes place with plenty of information in the public domain, and that we all have ample time to consider what is proposed. I am in the hands of the committee, but I am pretty sure that they will want to have a special meeting to discuss the application, and there will be pressure for this to be in public."

The new night flight submission can be viewed here.

IoT Gazette 4th Nov 2011

Clown makes a serious point

An irate clown was in no mood for jokes when he arrived at Manston airport on Friday to highlight the "circus" over night-time flying. Sporting a wig, tartan suit and painted clown face, protester Malcolm Kirkaldie attended a meeting of the Kent International Airport Consultative Committee.

Mr Kirkaldie, a former committee member before he resigned in disgust this year, said Thanet council's failure to properly monitor night flights had made a mockery of the 106 agreement with New Zealand-based operators Infratil. He said:

"Given the recent events at the Airport Working Party and the admission of certain failures in the 106 agreement and monitoring, it has turned into a bit of a circus – so I thought how appropriate to dress up as a clown."

A main issue at the meeting was the airport's delay in submitting a revised policy on night flights to the council so it could go to public consultation. Claims by airport managing director Charles Buchanan that a new policy would be handed to the council "imminently and shortly" were greeted by laughter from members of the public in attendance. When Conservative Canterbury councillor Peter Vickery-Jones asked about the revised policy, Mr Buchanan said:

"It will be completed imminently, but I can't be specific. The report is still being finalised."

Committee chairman Paul Twyman said the airport was in need of a clearer timeline. He said:

"'Imminently' is as long as a piece of string. The consultation will take some time and Thanet District Council must take time to consider all views."

Council leader Bob Bayford, who sits on the committee as a representative of the council, said the 12-week consultation would be "wide-ranging and unbiased" but he attracted groans from the audience when he said the council was carrying out the consultation despite "not being under any obligation". At the end of the meeting most questions and remarks from the public concerned night flights.

Commenting on the usefulness of the gathering, a very serious Mr Kirkaldie said that it was "weak".

TDC and Infratil: "no contact"

Well, well. The Chairman of KIACC (the consultative group for Kent International Airport) has forwarded a number of very good questions from the general public to Richard Samuel at TDC. The gist of it, unsurprisingly, is: what on earth is going on? Have a look at the exchange and see how many of KIACC's questions TDC answered...

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Dear Chief Executive:

I am receiving a number of emails about the Council's procedures for handling your consideration of Infratil's application on night noise, following the circulation of my note about our meeeting.

The following message is an example - from one of the many people who keep up a very active interest in Manston Airport - and I should be grateful if the questions raised could be addressed and a full reply sent to me for onward transmission to the KIACC membership and other interested parties.

Can you clarify something for us?

The public consultation about these proposals was put on ice after the Council stated that further information was required from Infratil.  We weren't told what information was required and neither was Infratil, before the announcement was made.

• Has the Council told Infratil what additional information they require?
• Can we be told what aditional information is required?
• Has Infratil provided this information? If so, can we see the additional information? If not, when does Infratil anticipate that they will provide this information, if at all?
• How can the Airport Working Party be considering the proposal if this information has not been provided?
• If TDC could not consider the application in the absence of this information, how can the process be continuing?
• When does the Council anticipate launching the public consultation?
• The Bureau Veritas report says that the economic benefits of the proposal do not justify the environmental damage that will be caused.  Has anything changed since this statement was made?  If not, what is the point of continuing?

Many thanks,

Paul Twyman
Chairman,  KIACC

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Dear Paul

The answer to these questions is very simple. The council has had no contact with Infratil since the Leader's announcement. Both sides agreed that the BV report should be published and examined first and appropriate recommendations made. I anticipate that the sort of information we will require is a stronger justification of the proposals and better suggestions on monitoring and regulation. However these are only my initial personal reactions to the questions and do not represent the council's formal position. As you know the next step is for members to consider the BV report which they will do next week.

Richard Samuel
Chief Executive
Thanet District Council

Herne Bay is 'the fall guy' for night flights

Clipping: thisiskent

HERNE Bay will be getting the worst of the night-flights deal being thrashed out at Manston, campaigners have warned. Kent International Airport owner Infratil is asking Thanet District Council to overturn the ban on regular night flying and let up to six cargo planes a night flying directly over Herne Bay. Manston claims development of passenger services will be possible only if the existing freight business is successful. And, to attract more freight, it must be able to schedule planes to land and take off at night.

The night flights will be fully laden cargo aircraft, which are usually older, louder planes. Every plane will count towards the total annual noise quota for the airport, and planes louder than the agreed maximum will be fined £1,000. Currently, flights over a set noise level which land of take-off at Manston after 11pm or before 6am are not allowed. If flights do happen, the carrier is liable for a £1,000 fine. Campaigner Phil Rose from Herne Bay is monitoring every Manston move. He said:

"What makes me angry is that Herne Bay is being set up as the fall guy and people need to know. Flights over Herne Bay will only count as being half as loud as they actually are, and pilots who break the rules, by being too loud or too low, will only get fined half as much. Manston will put all the planes they can over us, and we'll get the loudest. The impact on Herne Bay will be massive, and it will be all pain, no gain. The airport wants to move from two night flights a week to an average of 7.7 night flights per night – nearly a month's worth of noise every night. These old Boeing 747 cargo freighters sound like a pneumatic drill at full throttle seven metres away."

Bay city councillor Ron Flaherty, a former member of Kent International Airport consultative committee, said: "We are calling on Canterbury City Council officers to arrange a public meeting to hear what our residents have to say about this.

"It is clearly a most important issue to everyone who lives under the flight path. The last time this came up, Thanet District Council voted to have night flights but in a westerly direction – over Herne Bay. We must not be caught unawares this time."

He has called for council chief executive Colin Carmichael to chair the meeting. Campaigners are angry that meetings are being held in Thanet, but not Herne Bay. Paul Twyman, chairman of Kent International Airport, says he will now attend a meeting in Herne Bay. Those concerned about the plan can visit www.nonightflights.info to sign the online petition.

By jan thom

Warning to TDC and Infratil over Manston

Thanet District Council and Infratil, the owners of Manston Airport, have been warned they could end up in the High Court if the night-flights consultation process is botched. The warning has come from Paul Twyman, the chairman of airport watchdog the Kent International Airport Consultative Committee (KIACC).

An application from Infratil is expected to be placed in under two weeks and will detail the number of planes the company wants to be allowed to fly in and out of the airport between 11pm and 7am. There are concerns that any consultation will be undermined by lack of noise-monitoring data, an unclear policy about the routes that planes can take approaching and departing the airport, and the robustness of the consultation procedure.

The results of a noise-assesment report being prepared by consultancy Bickerdike Allen Partners, and commissioned by Infratil, should also be made available to the public before the consultation starts, many people are arguing. They say that any report is assessed and reviewed before a consultation starts – not during it. Mr Twyman said:

"I urge the council to think very carefully about they way in which they handle this consultation. If you go ahead with a half-baked process, if you make a hash of it, then I’m sure there will be people out there who would take a dim view of that – and I suspect there will be people who seek a judicial review. KIACC has spotted a pretty big hole here. It’s clear that in the last seven years a lot of nettles have not been grasped and now the time has come for KIACC to start to help the council to grasp those nettles. If the council go off half-cocked on this consultation, it could find itself in the High Courts. The night noise consultation could be starting in about 14 days and there are big issues around it."

The Section 106 agreement, a document that governs flight times and routes, is also out of date and needs to be revised, says Mr Twyman. The consultation will take place over a 12-week period and will involve meetings, phone polls, roadshow sessions and questionnaires. However, delays while reports are digested and analysed could mean that the process runs into Christmas. Brian White, Thanet council’s director of regeneration, said the local authority had not seen Infratil’s figures for the quota-count system, despite claims that people at the council had already seen them. When asked by Steve Higgins of the No Night Flights campaign if he had seen the proposed quota-count number, Mr White said:

"The Freedom of Information Act requires that anything the council holds it releases, but we haven’t got anything."

Nick Cole, of Monkton Parish Council, said: "It strikes me that there is probably a lot more work being done than we are being led to believe here:

"If the consultation is about to start in a matter of weeks, then I think it would be fair that some of the figures be given tonight. We must have an indication about how many flights we are talking about during night-time."

Charles Buchanan, the airport’s chief executive, responded by saying:

"I am not in a position to give a final number. You do not release half the specification in advance – you launch the whole thing when people can see the whole picture. They can see the benefits on one hand and the problems of the other. It would be misleading and diverting to look at just one part of it and that’s where we are."

At the meeting in public at the airport terminal on Friday last week, KIACC members voted against holding a meeting at the "other end of the runway" for villagers in places such as Monkton, Minster and St Nicholas-at-Wade. After a request for more information to be made available to more people, Mr Twyman proposed a series of meetings to inform the public in the villages and Herne Bay, but it was voted down. Conservative councillor Roger Latchford, Thanet council’s cabinet member who deals with the airport, voted against such meetings. However, a meeting on the application will take place in Ramsgate.

During the meeting it also emerged that the council’s mobile noise-monitor, which should be used to monitor the noise made by aircraft overflying areas such as St Nicholas, is still out of operation. Chris Wells, the council’s Conservative cabinet member for the environment, said it should be back in use – and in an airport employee’s garden – very soon as it had taken longer than expected to be fixed.

The airport’s application for a secondary radar tower has received planning consent. It will be built after the contract has been put out to tender. Four objections to the application had been received, but Mr White said that there were "no material reasons" why the application could not be approved, on Friday, August 6.

yourthanet.co.uk

Kent International Airport boss Charles Buchanan to release night-flight plans

Clipping: thisiskent

DETAILS of how many night flights bosses at Manston airport want will be available in two weeks. New airport boss Charles Buchanan said on Friday he would be ready to release the long-awaited figures shortly. He was speaking to the Kent International Airport Consultative Committee, which was holding its meeting in public.

Despite being pressed by committee members, he declined to reveal what Quota Count – the method by which planes are categorised by the noise they make – Infratil wanted. A 747 is equivalent to four QC. Later, Steve Higgins, a member of the public who watched the meeting, claimed to have a document showing the airport's owners Infratil wanted 1,995 QC – equivalent to around 500 night flights

Speaking to the Thanet Times after the meeting, Mr Buchanan said the figure was provisional and could change when Infratil put forward its plan. When Infratil does make public its proposals, it will begin a consultation to be run by Thanet council. Consultative committee chairman Paul Twyman said there were serious concerns over whether the process would be robust enough. He warned Thanet council that it could leave itself open to a legal challenge if people did not feel the consultation had been run properly.

Council planning boss Brian White said a lot of preparation had gone into getting ready for the consultation. Concerns were raised by the committee and members of the public who watched the meeting over how much time Thanet council would allow for people to make their views known. Worries over safety, pilots not using prescribed flying routes and the complaints procedure were also raised.

By rebecca smith rebecca.smith@krnmedia.co.uk

Hitch with noise monitor

Clipping: thisiskent

Problems with a machine used to monitor the noise created by Manston Airport has been blamed on a technical hitch. In July, the Isle of Thanet Gazette reported how members of the Kent International Airport Consultative Committee had been angry to find that a mobile noise monitoring system run by Thanet council had not been working for some months.

The group's chairman Paul Twyman said he intended to write to council leader Bob Bayford over the issue. The council revealed this week that the lack of monitoring was due to technical problems. A council spokesman said:

"There are ongoing problems with establishing communications with the kit to download the data. There are a number of options to try to resolve these problems and until each one has been tried by the council we cannot give a definitive time for it being fully operational. A problem was discovered during the last use of the monitor earlier this year. It was returned for calibration in June, when we identified the communications difficulties."

The airport carries out its own noise monitoring, which is taken from fixed positions nearby.



Anger as Kent leader stays away from Manston meeting

Paul Carter

Clipping: thisiskent

Paul Carter will be reported to KCC's standards committee after he pulled out of a meeting at Manston airport. The leader of Kent County Council Paul Carter could be reported to the authority’s watchdog on standards after failing to show at a meeting about Manston airport. Cllr Carter was due to attend Friday’s meeting of the Kent International Airport’s Consultative Committee but pulled out at the last minute and did not send a replacement.

The committee, which includes airport bosses and representatives of the surrounding towns and villages, had rearranged its meeting especially to have Cllr Carter attend. Committee chairman Paul Twyman said:

“We were very keen to have him talk to us and deliberately rescheduled the meeting to accommodate him. I am not at all pleased at this development. What I suggest we do is that we raise the matter with the Standards Committee at Kent County Council as I find it inappropriate and actually quite offensive as we have gone to all this trouble to arrange this meeting then we suddenly have the man pull out.”

The group voted to report the matter to the standards committee, which looks into complaints against councillors and assesses whether they have breached the code of conduct. Mr Carter, who has previously expressed his support for the airport’s expansion, claimed he had an unavoidable family engagement which had been rearranged for Friday.

There was heated debate at the meeting, with Ramsgate and Herne Bay residents quizzing airport chief executive Matt Clarke about the flight paths of incoming planes and the airport’s long-term viability. There were also a number of comments made from the public in support of the airport’s expansion. Mr Clarke said he would look into alternative approach routes for planes coming into the airport, which could reduce the noise experienced by those living nearby. At the end of the meeting, a resident handed Mr Clarke a banner bearing the words No Night Flights, which he said he wanted the chief executive to put up in his bedroom.