Representation by Kent Needs Manston Airport (Kent Needs Manston Airport)
- Date submitted
- 8 October 2018
- Submitted by
- Members of the public/businesses
Kent Needs Manston Airport [KNMA] are a grassroots group based in Thanet, founded by local business people in Cliffsend, Ramsgate during September 2015. KNMA now include members from surrounding areas of Thanet including Ramsgate, Margate, Broadstairs & Westwood Cross; Canterbury & District, and Dover & District in East Kent. We schedule weekly meetings and often collaborate daily. KNMA aim to support and encourage the community but especially young people to recognise how important Manston Airport and its regeneration will be in relation to opportunities for education, training, jobs and careers for people who live in East Kent.
KNMA wish to register as Interested Parties for the Examination of RiverOak’s Application for their project to acquire Manston Airport through compulsory acquisition and then to regenerate and operate Manston Airport through a Development Consent Order.
KNMA are associated with but distinguished from the Save Manston Airport association, and differ from it in making no efforts to debate the merits of the airport or attract a large membership of combative and robust keyboard warriors across the warp and weave of Facebook and Twitter. As part of their mission KNMA engage through social media but also through person-to-person contacts with training providers, institutions that offer further & higher education, local businesses and civic groups. Their members, all unpaid volunteers, made themselves known to directors of RiverOak Investment Corporation and their successors-in-time, RiverOak Strategic Partners Ltd, and have fully acquainted themselves with what RiverOak are offering local people.
KNMA’s members and officers went to RiverOak’s informal and two statutory public consultation exercises. We read their documentation, and we have seen it evolve and indeed grow. We availed ourselves of opportunities to read all of the published documentation and to engage with their directors and met several of their investors. We believe their DCO Funding Statement is sound and that it is fit for purpose. We believe that whatever difficulties there may be for overseas investors (especially Americans) to disclose information that may be closely protected by foreign laws from publication outside of their own countries, can be dealt with effectively and sufficiently by financial guarantees, protected by insurance bonds and by indemnity insurance-backed solicitors’ undertakings offered by legal advisers who have legal obligations to “know their clients”. We understand that acquisition costs and other liabilities including infrastructure development costs involved with DCO projects are frequently backed by insurance bonds. We regard those as satisfactory and ‘normal’.
KNMA have carefully considered RiverOak’s Draft Order for Development Consent and the Applicant’s Explanatory Memorandum. We regard those as well-crafted and sound, and we support them.
KNMA have closely read the Applicant’s Statement of Reasons, we find it persuasive and sound, and we strongly support it.
Having regard to other cases such as R (Mnydd y Gwynt Ltd) v Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy [2016] EWHC 2581 (Admin), 10/10/2016, KNMA members understand the importance of due diligence in RiverOak’s Environmental Impact Assessments, Habitat Regulations investigations, and the final, huge and exhaustive Environmental Statement. As some of us live at or near the edge of Pegwell Bay, and at locations only a few hundred metres from the Airport’s Southern boundary, we welcome RiverOak’s purchase of the Jentex site for the airport’s fuel farm, and we are conscious of the standard of care that is expected of Applicants in investigating the probable effects of the airport upon protected species, including birds and other animals. As local residents, we are favourably impressed with environmental studies, and reports that RiverOak has commissioned from world class experts in these fields and the Environmental Undertakings that RiverOak have made having regard for those: they are nuanced, proportionate and fit for purpose. When sensible balancing acts are undertaken, whatever measurable health detriments there may be are in any event far outweighed by the benefits of the proposed Draft Order when it comes to quality of life and longevity.
KNMA also wish to pay tribute to the due diligence and skill evident in the Azimuth Report by[Redacted] into the challenging socio-economic state of Thanet, the economic and business case for Manston Airport’s regeneration and the extent to which that will uplift the aspirations, skills and achievements of local people from one of hopelessness to a future that will compare well with the area’s remarkable and highly successful past. The airport’s future contributions in tax, business rates, taxes and employment will be beyond that of any other business in Thanet. We have studied that report carefully, engaged with [Redacted] personally, and are delighted to play our part in showing our community what will happen. We now wish to attest to our support for all of that before the Examining Authority.
KNMA are a Corporate Member of the Thanet & East Kent Chamber and of the Dover Chamber of Commerce, Some of our KNMA members also have represented other companies in those bodies over the course of many years. We have attended hustings and meetings of these Chambers in the past and know that almost every Member of them has supported the airport’s regeneration, at some meetings unanimously. They certainly wish for RiverOak’s DCO to succeed in all of its objectives. The granting of the Manston DCO will become the best news to befall Thanet and East Kent in decades.
RiverOak Strategic Partners have clearly demonstrated, during their consultations with KNMA and our members, that RSP wish to be an integrated part of the local community and its prosperity in Thanet and East Kent as well as in making a significant contribution to our regional and national economy. KNMA support that.