I bought a publication today that was published in 1942
about the bombing in Canterbury on 1st June 1942, I am assuming that
the copyright has expired on this and so am putting some of the pictures here
to mark the 75th anniversary albeit belatedly.
I produce a publication about the Ramsgate Blitz in 1940,
see http://michaelsbookshop.com/catalogue/id130.htm
with text and pictures from it here http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/1940/
so you will understand I have a special interest in this type of local history
publication.
While in the realms of what may or not be advertising or may, assuming you consider literature to come under the heading of the arts this is the link to the books that went out in my bookshop on Saturday
While in the realms of what may or not be advertising or may, assuming you consider literature to come under the heading of the arts this is the link to the books that went out in my bookshop on Saturday
I spent most of today in Canterbury, hence the purchase,
some of the time I spent fiddling with my watercolour from the downstairs
window of Chocolate Café. This was mostly hazily sketching in figures so that
perhaps a couple of watercolours down the line I can produce something that shows
the perspective and gives the feel of the café customers in the foreground and
the people in the distance.
I haven’t had much time for painting recently and it was a
very pleasant bit of relaxation today, as well as the bookshop being busy at
the moment I have this difficult and complex Manston DCO consultation which has
to be competed and submitted by next weekend.
Despite rsp emailing me promising to look into the problems
with their consultation website not working properly, nothing has happened to
improve it. Important webpages only show even numbered pages of documents for
example.
As with my draft response to the business case, see http://thanetonline.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/manston-dco-rsp-consultation-first.html
I have published my draft about the noise compensation issue below. I should
stress here that this is a daft and that any useful input would be helpful.
Manston Airport DCO Consultation Draft response Noise
Pollution and Compensation
My understanding from the PIER assumed flight paths,
aircraft, engine types and so on is that.
1 The flight path over Ramsgate has to remain the same and
changes to flight paths which may happen during later stages after the DCO
submission will have no significant affect on overflying Ramsgate.
2 That the noise impact on homes and businesses within
Ramsgate will be significant and that plans to mitigate them should be at a
fairly advanced stage prior to DCO submission as the DCO process is
front-loaded.
3 That aircraft noise mitigation in airport expansion is mostly
a matter of compensation and as an application for a DCO that would authorise
CA must be accompanied by a Funding Statement which should demonstrate that
adequate funding is likely to be available to enable the CA within the
statutory period following the DCO being made, and that the resource
implications of a possible acquisition resulting from a blight notices should
have been taken account of, I am therfore assuming that the whole compensation
issue has to be presented in one consultation response.
4 That the issues related to the Ramsgate conservation zone
and the number of listed buildings likely to be affected by noise should by
this stage have been at least partially addressed in order to approximately
assess sound insulation and cost with a view to determining compensation levels
related to the resource implications.
5 That negotiation related to sound insulation within the
conservation area between rsp, English Heritage and TDC conservation officers
is already occurring.
Due to issues with accessing the PEIR documents and
consultation website, see my emails, ref (Ross RiverOak Strategic Partners
Manston Airport consultation team) I am uncertain that I have managed to view
all of the consultation documents. So please accept my apologies for saying
that documents that should be there are missing are actually there, if this is
the case.
Obviously I am no expert in airport expansion DCOs and have
only been able to find examples of two which are expected to be submitted in
the UK one being this Manston one and the other being for the third runway at
Heathrow.
In terms of percentage expansion and therefore the
difference to historic noise disruption the Manston project would the by far
the greater civil aviation expansion based on previous activity at Manston.
In view of the front loaded nature of the DCO process and
the expectation that there would only be small and unavoidable change after the
application stage I had expected the PIER to be more compete in terms of
already addressing solutions to known and fundamentally unalterable
environmental problems.
Previous submissions for Manston expansion have included
noise contour maps for unavoidable parts of the fightpaths, most especially
related to the necessity to overfly the densely populated town of Ramsgate
because of the location of the runway. I have been unable to find these within
the PEIR.
A comprehensive noise pollution plan would seem to be
particularly important as the possibility of nighttime flying appears to be
envisaged as part of the application.
Although the Heathrow expansion is at an earlier stage in
progressing towards the DCO I am assuming that their noise mitigation and
compensation package would be broadly similar to the Manston one. Although I
suppose that as Thanet is an economically depressed area and therefore has
higher levels of poverty some less comprehensive scheme may be envisaged
related to the population being poorer with lower levels of employment and home
ownership.
I also asked about the funding and compensation issue at the previous
non statutory consultation and followed this up by email to pins 5.8.2016, the
pins advice encouraged me to write to RiverOak which resulted in an email
correspondence between me and rsp director George Yerrall who said, email
32.8.2016:-
“Dear Michael,
Thank you for your patience in awaiting my response. I was away on vacation with my family and I
try to “unplug” when I am away.
Your list of questions is hard for me to process as it
contains numerous requests to respond to something said to you by a “RiverOak
rep” as well as a number of assumptions you have made that seem factually
difficult to understand such as your assumption that the airport would be
“classified brownfield and that the cpo land compensation will be based on an
open market valuation for brownfield land in southeast England., plus blight
compensation.”
However, as you know, the PINS consultation process is very
transparent and all of your issues will be addressed and published in due
time. I understand that waiting for
answers can be frustrating and that is not my intent.
Thank you again for your patience and I look forward to
addressing all of your concerns in the near future.
Best regards,
George”
Added to this would be the airport site value compensation I
understand this is 283 hectares, designated brownfield. Independent valuation https://www.kent.gov.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/53882/Land-prices.pdf
puts southeast non agricultural land prices, residential in the av £4m per
hectare ballpark with the lowest in Dover at about £1.75m and industrial in the
£1.1m ballpark. My assumption from your airfreight hub job forecasts is that
your own assessment of the potential site value would be seen as profitable
commercial, so that you would see the minimum site value as nearest equating to
industrial. This would put your assessment of the minimum site value in the
area of £300m, with the worst-case scenario rising to cover those parts of the
site that the current owners intend for residential use being considerably
higher. There is also the of course the situation where the airport was
available as a failing business with no alternative viable commercial plans and
could probably have been bought in the £10m ballpark so I assume this could be
taken as a quasi best case scenario
In trying to comprehend how the CA and potential blight
acquisition compensation could be covered by provably legitimately sourced
investment that would be acceptable to the DFT and enable the publication of a
transparent funding statement, which is an integral part of a DCO requiring CA,
I have drawn some conclusions. My
understanding is that rsp isn’t an aviation company but an investment conduit
and I find it difficult to see major investors attracted to a project with
uncosted and potentially open-ended compensation liabilities. I am therefore
assuming that potential investment, in the event of the airfreight hub scheme
failing, would be covered by the potential residential site value of what I
understand to be a brownfield site. I am also assuming that any blight
acquisitions would increase in value considerably were this to happen.
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Comments, since I started writing this blog in 2007 the way the internet works has changed a lot, comments and dialogue here were once viable in an open and anonymous sense. Now if you comment here I will only allow the comment if it seems to make sense and be related to what the post is about. I link the majority of my posts to the main local Facebook groups and to my Facebook account, “Michael Child” I guess the main Ramsgate Facebook group is We Love Ramsgate. For the most part the comments and dialogue related to the posts here goes on there. As for the rest of it, well this blog handles images better than Facebook, which is why I don’t post directly to my Facebook account, although if I take a lot of photos I am so lazy that I paste them directly from my camera card to my bookshop website and put a link on this blog.