Friday 12 January 2018

New Manston Airport DCO Doocuments for the 2018 Consultation and a few old Margate and Ramsgate pictures

Initial observations related to accessing and navigating the consultation documents published 12th January 2018. Having heard on Facebook that the documents had been published I went to the RSP website http://rsp.co.uk/ clicked on the documents page http://rsp.co.uk/documents-page/ only to discover the links to the documents weren’t there. This is made even more confusing as the first link on the page is to the Statement of Community Consultation 2018 and the documents 01 to 10 underneath it are not dated so my assumption was that these were the new consultation documents however they proved to be the documents for the previous 2017 consultation.

I eventually found the links to the 2018 consultation on the page http://rsp.co.uk/statutory-consultation/ the link from the homepage doesn’t state that this is where the new document links are to be found.

My main interest in these plans relate to human health because the previous PEIR clearly stated that the air pollution, particularly the particulate air pollution would reduce life expectancy. I take this to mean kill people, so I have written to RSP on several occasions asking for more details about this.

Instead of replying to my questions and hopefully refuting that their project would kill people, their replies have been that the information I want will be published in their future documents.

So I have used my initial search for this information to discover if the documents are published in a usable and viable way for an ordinary member of the public locally to be able to use, search and navigate.

The consultation page http://rsp.co.uk/statutory-consultation/ is an ordinary webpage, searchable by pressing Ctrl F and using the search box that appears it opens quickly and works well on my phone, tablet and laptop.

The first really bad news in terms of internet accessibility is about half way down this page where it says:-

“On the right hand side of this page you can find downloadable copies of all of the consultation documents.

To download a document, click the link to view it then click on the ‘Download PDF’ icon (a white rectangle with a dark grey downwards arrow inside it) in the grey bar above the document. By downloading the document you will be able to browse and search it more easily on your device.”

On opening the first document http://rsp.co.uk/documents/consultation/01-an-introduction-to-the-consultation-2018/ it is obvious that this website has issues. page one is the RSP logo and header, page to is a blank page with the number “2” on it. Page 3 starts about a quarter of the way down and seems to be repeated further on for instance the bottom of page 3 is repeated on another page 3 further on in the document. On page 4 the number starts again at number 1.

My problem is that I would like to search the thousands of pages of the revised PIER for words like air, pollution, particulate, mortality, and so on, to see if anyone has found a work around that would stop their airfreight hub’s fuel burn from killing off local people.

Because of the way the information has been published it isn’t searchable in the ordinary way, pdf files can only be searched by opening the file and using the viewer to search for words.

There doesn’t seem to be any index showing which of the volumes of the PIER document any given piece of information is in so to find anything you have to open all nine downloaded documents and search them individually.

To put this into a context that is easy to understand, suppose you wanted to buy a television from Argos and when you went to the Argos website there was no pattern of searchable links; technology – sound and vision – televisions and no search box either. The only way to find all the televisions Argos had for sale for sale was to download the whole Argos website in nine separate pdf files and then search each file for the word television.

Some of the content is? er. Interesting 

"in year 20, significant adverse effects have been identified as being likely a result of an increase in noise in the following communities which are in the vicinity of the airport and flight paths: Ramsgate;„  Manston;„  Wade;„  West Stourmouth; and„  Pegwell Bay.„ 1.1.83 In these communities aircraft noise would increase to the point where there would be a perceived change in quality of life for occupants of buildings in these communities or a perceived change in the acoustic character of shared open spaces within these communities."




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2 comments:

  1. I use glasses and a magnifying glass to read you as print small- but not of the essence! If people read your last paragraph certainly interesting if it's in 2020 - not long..Maybe someone will post this more widely. What will PINS think about it .I am more than a bit sceptical about the value of a consultation .Think local groups should ensure PINS is aware .But better if RSPcan say how they propose to abate this nuisance if the quality of life of local communities does arise - it's a reasonable question to ask.

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  2. Have to agree. The format of the PEIR is appalling. The lack of an index appears to be a deliberate ploy to prevent people from finding the really important stuff. They've ignored TDC's advice on extending the consultation to 6 weeks. It's a disgrace, for a project of this magnitude, they've initiated the consultation on the day they've released the documents and are only intending to run the consultation for 4 weeks. Not sure if it's just me but most of the documents they've produced seem to be padded out with loads blank pages and guff. I'm really struggling to find anything of substance. The "Masterplan" is an absolute joke. Nothing about their plans at all.

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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.