Representation by Tricia Austin Hartley
- Date submitted
- 5 October 2018
- Submitted by
- Members of the public/businesses
RSP Ltd argue that the country needs a new 24 hour freight hub and that this should be located at Manston, despite substantial evidence to the contrary. Such evidence includes: • the bulk of freight in fact being carried by sea • most air freight now being carried in the belly of passenger flights • existing capacity at established airports such as Stansted and East Midlands • poor road infrastructure in East Kent for onward transport of goods • several previous failures of Manston as a commercial airport.
Not only is this hub not needed, if approved it has the potential to devastate the economy of the area around Manston and to severely damage the lives of local people, as well as blighting it as a location for business and tourism for many years to come.
The Isle of Thanet is starting to revive after many years of decline and neglect. Tourism is building up and small businesses are relocating to the area. But we still face many challenges. Young people’s achievement in Thanet remains well below the national average, though it is improving. Good quality jobs are not plentiful.
So it is easy to see how some local people may be attracted by RSP’s promise of many hundreds of jobs at the revived airport. A few minutes’ research, however, reveals that cargo processing is largely automated and so relatively few jobs are likely to be created – many fewer than the jobs that will be destroyed from damage to tourism if their proposals are approved.
As a former teacher, I am particularly concerned about the potential impact of RSP’s proposals on young people in the area, whose health is likely to be damaged by particulate pollution and their sleep by the large numbers of extremely noisy flights RSP propose, stating baldly in their submission that this will indeed have adverse effects on the quality of life of people living in the surrounding areas and on the experience of being in public spaces in those areas.
My first teaching job was at Feltham near Heathrow, where we had to pause our lessons every 10 minutes throughout the day while the planes went over, as we could not hear each other speak. The number of hours of learning children in that school lost in a year was substantial, and this cannot have helped their future prospects.
In an area like Thanet, where young people already underachieve, the loss of teaching and learning time will cause further damage – but this will be exacerbated by the impact of the night flights that RSP Ltd insist will be required, which will disrupt their sleep too. Medical research shows that disrupted sleep, alongside exposure to noise and pollution in the daytime, can cause serious physical and mental health problems in both children and adults - and public health in Thanet is already much poorer than the national average.
Such damage cannot possibly be justified on the very slim grounds put forward by RSP, and I urge you strongly to reject their request for a Development Consent Order.