Biggin Hill Airport Noise Action Plan
We can now confirm that Bromley Council’s Executive Committee will consider the Biggin Hill Airport Noise Action Plan Review in early January.
The item will first be put to the Executive, Resources and Contracts Policy Development and Scrutiny (PDS) Committee, which will meet on Wednesday 5th January 2022 at 7pm.
The Executive Committee meeting will follow on Wednesday 12th January 2022 at 7pm.
Agenda papers for these meetings will be available on the Council’s website by 23rd December2021.
Any questions submitted by the public for the previous meetings in November will be carried forward to the January meetings and you should have received notification to this effect from the Council.
The deadline for the submission of any further questions to the Scrutiny Committeeis 5pm on 29th December 2021.
The deadline for the submission of any further questions to the Executive Committee is 5pm on 6th January 2022.
Both meetings will take place in the Council Chamber at the Civic Centre. We have been advised that the public will be allowed to attend, although capacity in the Council Chamber will be limited by the need to ensure that conditions are as safe as reasonably practicable for everyone. Anticipating a high attendance, the Council is going to make available overflow rooms for those who cannot be accommodated in the Chamber.
It is important the Council does not have the opportunity to infer that a low attendance implies a lack of interest or concern from residents so we would encourage you to vote with your feet and come in numbers to both meetings, subject to any further restrictions in force at the time. Whilst any final decision will be taken by the Executive Committee, it is likely they will be guided by the outcome of the Scrutiny Committee, as well as by a visible presence from residents at each meeting. For that reason we feel it equally important to attend both meetings if you can. Please do not underestimate the importance of the PDS meeting.
The Council has requested that anyone wishing to attend the meetings should inform them in advance using the following link. If you plan to come (as we hope), we suggest you book early. Please copy and paste this link to your browser to complete the request form:
https://www.bromley.gov.uk/CouncilMeetingNoticeOfAttendanceForm
Letters to your Councillors and to the Executive Committee in the weeks preceding these meetings are still extremely important. Although this is the Christmas season and we are all busy, the more we can keep our concerns front and centre with the Council, the more they will have to heed our comments. Please continue to write to:
Colin.smith@bromley.gov.uk (Leader of the Council)
Michael.rutherford@bromley.gov.uk
Christopher.marlow@bromley.gov.uk (Chairman of the Scrutiny Committee)
Matthew.amer@bromley.gov.uk (Airport Monitoring Officer)
We’d like to thank you for the letters and emails you have already written to the Council and for spreading the word and distributing our leaflet amongst your neighbours, friends and family. Please continue with this effort and share the details of the meetings with as many people as you can. A new leaflet is attached with the new dates and times. It would be helpful if you could please find the time to distribute it, as you did with the previous one.
Please click this link for the new leaflet.
We’ve had many, many emails from you and we’ve tried to answer as many as possible. Some questions have been raised several times. You may find the following list of Frequently Asked Questions of interest:
- The response from the Council has asked for more detail about the errors and misinterpretations identified by Flightpath Watch. Is there a list I could refer to?
All Councillors were sent a copy of the Flightpath Watch response to the Noise Action Plan Review and, of course, the detail is laid out in that document, together with an Executive Summary. However, to help anyone who is writing to the Council, we have also produced the following documents, which further summarise the issues. Inevitably, some impact and accuracy is lost when attempting to reduce detail to bullet points. In any communication with the Council it is important to refer the recipients to the original Flightpath Watch document dated 8th October 2021, which they already have.
Please click this link for a summary list of errors and misinterpretations
Please click this link for the key concerns affecting residents
We hope this helps you in selecting the items of most importance to you when writing your letters.
- Could Flightpath Watch send its report directly to the CAA even though the Council did not themselves include it in the CAA Review?
Flightpath Watch had no knowledge until very recently of which department of the CAA had been engaged. Moreover, we were told that LBB and the CAA had a contractual relationship which did not include FPW and it would therefore not have beencorrect to interject into that process. We did, however, expect the Council to be fair and submit our document, which it did not do. Some of us met recently with the Airport Monitoring Officer (AMO) and raised the question as to why the Council had not requested our input. We were told that they were unaware of our concerns about the failure by BHAL to meet their commitments to the granting of the extended hours and which are therefore central to the questionof whether the Noise Action Plan Review can be accepted. We have reminded them that we delivered our concerns to LBB at the end of June this year, before the CAA contract had been awarded, so they had had plenty of opportunity to ensure that residents’ views were considered.
- What are the Terms of Reference for the CAA Review?
The response to our Freedom of Information Act request for the Terms of Reference has been stonewalled with the reason that they will be published with the papers for the forthcoming meetings. We have been told to expect them on December 20th (“or thereabouts”).
- What was the reason for the deferral of the item to consider the BHAL Noise Action Plan Review from the November meetings?
The AMO told us that this was because the Council were awaiting some legal advice which had not been received in time. We have no further detail of the nature of this late request for legal advice.