Representation by The A Mcevoy and M Macmillan Family
- Date submitted
- 8 October 2018
- Submitted by
- Members of the public/businesses
As mental health practitioners we are concerned about the cargo hub planned for Manston airport. RSP’s proposals would be 17,000 movements not the previous 500 a year, it is proposed that what was a regional airport becomes a 24/7 cargo hub hugely impacting the towns of Ramsgate Minster and Herne Bay.
QC4 are considered too noisy for the night quota at Heathrow so RSP are clearly aiming at the bottom end of the market by attempting to undercut other operatives. They also appear having read their noise mitigation document to be undercutting other airports in their penalties for carrier/freight that arrives late at night and into a restricted period. The proposed restrictions appear to be less restrictive than when the airport was previously operational which hardly bodes well for the sleep of residents. RSP suggest that Manston is capable of handling 83,000 ATM’s annually yet their noise assessment is based on a figure of 17,000 ATM’s? RSP are assessing “significant effects of aircraft noise at night” through an “18 times a night “ awakening metric. My concern is this will have significant effects of the physical and mental health of the populations of Thanet, Herne Bay and the villages. Numerous research links physical health problems such as cancer, asthma, stroke and heart disease, diabetes, obesity and dementia to air pollution in addition to the obvious health related issues of lung disease and asthma. Thanet already has double the rate of life limiting long term illness when compared to the broad population of South East England in some parts of Thanet life expectancy is 18 years lower than the best rate in the country. Noise is an important factor for good mental health, sleep deprivation causes anxiety, depression, trauma and more severe conditions such as psychosis and schizophrenia we already have in Thanet the highest figures for mental health and severe mental health conditions in Kent.
I have mainly written about the impact of night noise and flights but the impact will occur during the day too effecting education, health, business, leisure in fact every aspect of people’s lives here. RSP have documented in their own proposal that “ significant adverse effects have been identified at the communities of Ramsgate, Pegwell Bay and Manston as a result of the proposed development. The effect would be characterised as a perceived change in the quality of life”, as practitioners who works in the mental health/ social care field this seriously concerns me.
On a personal level we have worked in local mental health services in the past assessing clients and attempting to work therapeutically. The freight aircraft then caused huge disturbance to the sessions but then there were comparatively few, we are now contemplating 4-5 hourly by our calculations.
. [Redacted]