What Is This About?

The R A G E page is a newsletter for the member organisations of the Rochester Airport Group Executive.

We obviously cannot afford to put out newsletters to every household all that often, but what we can do is create something for public display—and our media contacts—and that’s exactly what this is.

Current State of Play

You will recall that, after the full Medway Council agreed to accept an early return of the lease from GEC-Marconi, we were to tackle the next stage of our campaign which was to ask “difficult” (because of the way this issue was handled) questions of the Council, with the expectation of receiving totally unsatisfactory responses. This activity would form the basis of complaints to the Local Government Ombudsman, either submitted individually or (preferably) through Councillor Mrs Jane Chitty.

As the R A G E Secretary I had hoped to have such questions and replies copied to me, but to date hardly anything has arrived here. This is a pity as:

There is still a little time for this to be done, but in the meantime I have written to the Ombudsman’s office to let them know what is brewing.

By the way, the lease has just been handed back to the Council, on 30th November. From then just six weeks have been allowed for someone else to take it over.

I have been made aware of a range of other activities by several R A G E members, and these are covered in this newsletter. So, in alphabetical order of their acronym (for want of a better method!) here is what has been going on these past weeks.

CPRE Kent

(Council for the Protection of Rural England)
David Murr of CPRE Kent has written to Councillor Fribbins about the Rochester Airport Working Party. Paul McKim (the Council official who, way back in August, came to the DERAC Community Centre to talk about the airport) has recently replied to say that the Working Party has not yet met, and their Terms of Reference will be sent to us (i.e. via CPRE Kent).
The Working Party comprises six Councillors, two each Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat, as follows:
  • Con’ : Jane Chitty & Richard Wozencroft
  • Lab’ : Vernon Hull & John Griffin
  • LibDem : Ken Slater & John Booth

    DERAC

    (Davis Estate Residents Association Chatham)
    DERAC has been keeping residents on the Davis Estate informed of developments on the airport saga via occasional newsletters/leaflets delivered to all households, augmented by posters put up around the Estate, the latter enthusiastically masterminded by DERAC’s Jon Sherwood, who has also submitted a very good letter to the Council’s Chief Executive.

    However Medway Council has now written to the Association to stop them “fly posting”—i.e. no more posters are to be put up. Although this could perhaps be something Medway Council would have done anyway, the timing is a little too coincidental, so one cannot help but suspect that it was deliberately intended to prevent DERAC informing its residents without incurring prohibitive costs.

    Interestingly, although the above-mentioned official Mr McKim accepted that DERAC would incur costs as a result of his office’s actions and that “there should be no problem” in Medway Council sending DERAC some money to help cover these costs (the modest sum of £300 was mooted), there has been no response whatsoever to either the original request for this amount nor to any chase-up about it.

    It again appears that the Council’s stated remorse over their handling of (primarily) the consultation aspect of this whole affair—public apologies and other statements notwithstanding—is just a sham, as was suspected by many of us right from the start.

    There have also been individual approaches to Medway Council by Davis Estate residents, a few of which have been copied to me and are on file here.

    The R A G E Web-site is updated periodically, but only when I have something concrete to add.

    SBCS

    (Short Brothers Commemoration Society)
    Darrell Penhale of SBCS has been actively pursuing the matter of national government policy regarding transport, specifically the Government White Paper “A New Deal for Transport” (ISBN 0101395027) and National Government’s perception of the Medway Locan Plan in relation to that White Paper and the guidance on General Aviation airfields in a document referenced PPG13. There is also a 1985 Airports White Paper which is still extant.

    All this will of course have to be taken into account by the Inspector when the anticipated Public Local Enquiry is held.

    Interestingly the response from the Department of the Environment’s Airports Policy Division states that the Inspector “will make recommendations to the local authority” rather than instructing the Council on what it may and may not do. The DoE response also responds to Mr Penhale’s question of whether the site is brownfield or greenfield, stating that “The general principle is that land previously used, and which is in a sustainable location could be classed as brownfield land.”

    Not very encouraging, is it?

    More news soon…

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