Representation by Florence Moon
- Date submitted
- 9 November 2023
- Submitted by
- Members of the public/businesses
Dear Mr Bishton Your predecessor as CEO of the CAA, Andrew Haines, coined the phrase "noise sewers" to describe flight paths that subject communities to constant, intensive, aircraft noise. Last week the CAA approved Gatwick Airport's FASI South Initial Options Appraisal. If implemented Gatwick's proposals are likely to create noise sewers both east and west of the airport. Specifically: Each of the single track arrival options Gatwick has proposed would subject overflown communities to many times the number of aircraft they experience today. The impacts on those communities would be profound. Quality of life would be destroyed. There would be substantial health and mental health impacts. Property values would collapse, without compensation. Astonishingly, neither Gatwick nor the CAA has acknowledged, let alone considered, any of those impacts. The very few multi-track options Gatwick has retained would have less profound but still significant impacts on overflown communities. Again these have not been considered by Gatwick or the CAA. Some of these options also overfly large communities, such as Tunbridge Wells, and other areas below 7,000 feet but outside the LOAEL contour. But no account has been taken of people in these communities, because they are not considered by the airport or the CAA to be affected by aircraft noise. Other multi-track and respite options that should have been considered by Gatwick have not been, or have been rejected because they do not achieve industry capacity aspirations. We are aware that Gatwick believes a hybrid approach will be required for arrivals, combining vectoring within a Radar Manoeuvring Area and intensely used PBN flight paths, and that this might create some dispersion of aircraft. However, it has not been able to explain how this would work, what dispersion it would create and how that might change over time. As a result the noise environment for communities is unclear and it is, in our view, premature to shortlist options. We are also aware that Gatwick will be required to consult on its proposals at the next stage of the process. But the consultation is only required to consider options that have now been shortlisted. If single track options are eliminated, as we believe they should be, Gatwick's consultation might only consider a tiny number of residual options that have been carefully selected to meet industry goals but which have very substantial community impacts. Other options that might achieve superior outcomes would be excluded without ever having been considered. That would make a mockery of the CAP1616 process and be wholly unacceptable to communities. We have engaged with Gatwick continuously and extensively on these and other issues for over two years but have seen no sign that the airport is willing to take them into account or to develop and assess options that might address them. We therefore wrote to the CAA on 25 September setting out our concerns. We requested a meeting with your teams so the issues could be discussed and potential solutions explored. The response we received last week failed to address any of the concerns we had raised, informed us that Gatwick's proposals had been approved and declined our request for a meeting. We are astonished that the CAA, whilst regularly asserting that it is committed to stakeholder engagement, refuses to engage with us on critical issues and is willing to accept airport engagement and assessment processes that both omit potentially high performing options and fail to take community concerns seriously. Your assessment of Gatwick's proposals has instead been superficial and box-ticking. In our view, the CAA has failed in its core regulatory responsibilities of ensuring that options have been properly identified and assessed and stakeholder views properly taken into account. It seems very likely that this is in part because the CAA has conflicting roles in the airspace modernisation programme, as airspace regulator and programme co-sponsor. Your colleague Paul Smith stated at the May meeting of the Aviation Council that the CAA planned to work closely with the airspace change sponsors to "ensure" that their proposals successfully moved through CAP 1616 gateways. In its desire to accelerate the programme, the CAA appears to have allowed its role as co-sponsor to take priority over its responsibilities for ensuring that airspace change options are properly identified and assessed, and that there is effective engagement on airports' proposals. A potential conflict of interest has become an actual conflict. Unless the position changes, communities can no longer be confident that the CAA will deliver its statutory role in airspace changes impartially and in accordance with the law and legal guidance. Although we are writing to you about the position at Gatwick, similar issues are certain to arise at other airports. The central concern about intensification of flight paths and resulting community impacts has been raised with the CAA and DfT many times but never addressed in the open and detailed way that is plainly required. For example Tailor Airey's 2020 report for Heathrow noted that government policy on flight path dispersion/ concentration was vague and non committal and that new metrics were needed, but there has been no follow up. ACOG's August 2022 report on airspace modernisation technology identified that options for noise dispersal preferred by many communities required further work to achieve, but as far as we are aware there has been no further work. No attempt has been made to assess, let alone apply, lessons from the controversial NextGen programme in the US. One of the key objectives in the CAA's Airspace Modernisation Strategy is that the programme should "take account of the interests of all stakeholders affected by the use of airspace". It is now clear beyond any doubt that that objective is not being achieved in any credible or meaningful way. We have reached a position where the industry feels able to disregard community views with impunity and the regulator refuses to act or even engage on issues of critical importance to communities. If the CAA and the government have any interest in delivering a programme with a degree of community support, and without protest and litigation, there needs to be significant change. Community concerns must be identified, engaged with and addressed, not casually dismissed by change sponsors and the CAA and indeed the government. We would like to work constructively with you, the Department and other stakeholders to identify and implement those changes. As a first step we would like to meet you to discuss the points raised in this letter. We hope you will be prepared to do so. Finally, although this letter focuses on arrival issues, we note that some of Gatwick's departure proposals may raise comparable issues. Your Sincerely, Florence Moon