Representation by Sheelagh Deller
- Date submitted
- 16 September 2018
- Submitted by
- Members of the public/businesses
I live in Kent for 50 years and recently moved to Ramsgate to be in a seaside town in an area of natural beauty. However Kent does have particularly worrying transport problems. Ramsgate used to have a port. Reinstating a port would certainly be preferable to reinstating an airport which has significantly failed with all the past attempts to develop it. Ramsgate attracts a number of tourists and is attracting more residents from places like London as it is a cheaper and healthier place to live.
Freight is currently well catered for in a number of UK airports including East Midlands and Stansted, which in fact have spare capacity for this. There have been failed attempts in the past to run Manston as a freight and passenger airport and there is no reason to believe that this could be viable in the future. This is mostly due to its position which is in a corner of the country and therefore not close enough to bigger hubs.
The traffic in Kent is already overloaded. If freight came to Manston it would cause a huge increase of traffic in this area, including petrol tankers as Manston is not connected to the CLH pipeline system.
Noise and air pollution are a huge problem in the Uk. 24/7 freight flights in this area would adversely affect the daily life and health of the citizens. The proposed QC$ rated ATMs would be disastrous.
I am very concerned about the track record of the applicants. It certainly does not fill me with confidence that they could finance, maintain and run such an enterprise. It would be disastrous if they were given the opportunity and then it failed yet again so that Thanet, Ramsgate and Manston are faced again with the problem of what to do with Manston. The obvious answer is housing.
The UK desperately needs more housing. The Manston airport site could cater for a large number of varied types of housing , including social housing. There would also be the opportunity to build a new school, shops, restaurants and other facilities. This project would certainly create more jobs then an airport. I also wonder why anyone would want to live in a house on the airport if the proposal of sharing the site with an airport became a reality.
In summary. My main arguments are: Noise, tourism, pollution, transport, not enough housing, business experience.