At last, Herne Bay gets a mention

Herne Bay residents will be delighted that our Council has finally stirred itself. They will be looking at all the responses from the CCC area, collating them, and presenting Canterbury's considered opinion.

Hopefully, this will mean that the views of Herne Bay residents will, in effect, be presented twice - firstly in TDC's analysis of the responses, and secondly when reiterated by Canterbury.

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Council urges residents to give airport views

Canterbury City Council is urging local residents to have their say about proposals for regular night flights at Manston Airport. Thanet District Council has begun a month of consultation to find out people’s views on night flying at the airport, and with Herne Bay directly on the flight path, the city council is keen to ensure the town’s residents in particular give their comments. Executive member for transport, Cllr Peter Vickery-Jones, said:

“Thanet District Council has now changed its approach to this consultation. Previously it was planning to carry out a wide ranging consultation, including contacting thousands of homes directly to hear views. And we, as a city council, had paid some of the cost of this in order to ensure some Herne Bay properties were included. Now, it is just holding a standard consultation in which people are being given the opportunity to comment on the proposals.

I am urging everyone in Herne Bay in particular, and people across the rest of the district in general, to take part in this consultation and tell Thanet District Council what they think about the possibility of regular night flights at Manston. It is vital our residents take this opportunity to make their views known.”

The proposals by the airport’s owners Infratil, the results of assessments commissioned by Thanet District Council and details of how to get involved in the consultation are on Thanet's website. Comments should be submitted by Friday 2 March. Everyone taking part is required to give a name and address, including the post code. This is so particular attention can be paid to those people who live on the identified flight path and are directly affected by the proposal.

Cllr Vickery-Jones added:

“Once the deadline has passed, we have agreed with Thanet District Council that we will see all the comments from people with a Canterbury district post code. This will then enable us to formally write to Thanet, summarising the views of our residents and ensuring they take the feedback from our district into consideration.”

CCC website

Comments

[Igloo]

Can somebody explain the point of giving our opinions?

Infratil has said that they will be running night-flights irrespective of what anybody says. They say that they are allowed to do this under the terms of a Section 106 Agreement which Thanet District Council idiotically agreed with the previous owners, Wiggins.

Thanet District Council says that it agrees with Infratil. It says that it has no powers to intervene and is simply being asked to "comment" on Infratil's plans. As far as I can tell, this means that we are all going to spend hours and hours drafting carefully constructed arguments and these will be carefully filed in the bin at TDC's offices before the Council comes up with some ambiguously worded cr*p about wanting to balance the environmental needs of its residents with Infratil's god-given right to operate all night every night.

If we all say that we don't want these night-flights, what will be done to stop them?

[John]

I agree Its all a farce but we still have to try. Democracy is as corrupt and broken as ever. It's the old story of the little people against the big and very bad corporation.

"If we all say that we don't want these night-flights, what will be done to stop them?"

Then the residents will have to go the airport, set up a camp and cause as much of a nuisance as possible AND we will claim that we are doing it for economical reasons so that thousands of kids, workers, tourist can get some sleep so they can complete a productive day.

John.

[Denis Cannon]

I agree with John. It would be reasonably easy to disrupt movement of goods to and from the airport and indeed Thanet itself if the will is there. Imagine what disruption 500 cars doing 15mph on all the roads around the airport would bring. We could isolate Westwood Cross at week-ends no problem at all and I doubt TDC would welcome the responses from the major chains.
It can be done.

[Mister B]

If nobody responds it sends the clear message that ordinary members of the public don't care what happens to them.

Society is not here for the benefit of one or two to make money out of other people's misfortune or misery.

I will happily join any protest to show that we are not all stupid.

There MUST be some hope, otherwise we would already have these flights running every few minutes through the night.