The Thanet Plane Question and some old Plane Photos in Thanet.

Just over 100 years ago Aeroplanes came to Thanet

This is a picture of an aeroplane at Margate in 1913.

Here a Bleriot Plane snapped in 1913 at Margate

The general public has had a considerable interest in aviation since.

Here in Thanet the ups and downs of Manston Airport, with its critics and supporters, some aspects of aviation here being both so crazy as to make all of wonder. When this craziness seems to be supported by our local politicians and council officers it can make all of wonder what on earth to believe.

I posted about one of these incidents this morning,

here is the link

This is St Mildred's in 1914

With the current bid to reopen Manston Airport as an airfreight hub there are now thousands of documents published on the internet, the most recent being on the pins website

Here is the link

The information is still flowing in, new things come up, people have to change their minds about aspects of the project, all in all it's fairly difficult both for the people supporting the plans and those against them.

I have tried all along with Manston to take a fairly balanced view, this goes back for more than 10 years, most of what I have said about it should come up by using the link below and when you get to the end of a page of posts clicking on the 'older posts' link at the bottom of each page of posts.

Here is the link

As you would expect with thousands of pages submitted by RiverOak RSP there will be things that I don't understand, either because I have made a mistake or they have. Periodically I ask them questions and some of these still have outstanding answers.

So having got a bit frustrated with this process I emailed pins today:-

"Hi Manston Case team at pins

 

I still haven’t had any response to my questions about particulate dispersion distances made both to pins and RiverOak rsp on numerous occasions, including a deadline 1 submission.

 

I have tried to search the post application documents, but like the application itself it doesn’t have a dedicated and reliable search facility or comprehensive index. Because the pins application isn’t published as a normal website in html but as a series of pdf documents this makes it almost invisible to search engines like Google. This means the word particulate only brings up 3 matches, my own submission no appearing at all. The application as published on the pins website brings up no matches for the word particulate.    

 

To be absolutely clear with this pm10s disperse (fall to the ground) within about 1km of the burn that generated them and pm2.5s travel much further as airborne matter and certainly further than the Thanet coastline.

 

RiverOaks various environmental documents all appear to have made the fundamental error of using the same dispersion distance for pm 2.5s they used for the much larger pm10s i.e. about 1km and basically not much further than the proposed airport perimeter.

 

Using this wrong figure has resulted in a figure of only 1 death in Thanet from particulate matter whereas using the correct dispersion distance for pm2.5s would suggest a considerable increase.

 

Broadly RiverOak documentation appears to agree with current information about pm2.5s, which indicates an increase of 10 μg/m3 equates to premature death or the early onset dementia around in 20%. Of the population.

 

20% of the Thanet population would be. around 30,000 people.

 

Here in Thanet the problem with and airfreight hub with more than 10,000 movements per year, which would burn more than 30,000 tonnes of kerosene on or near the ground at Manston, would be exacerbated by the onshore sea breezes holding the air pollution in the main concentrations of population.

 

Obviously if both the applicant and pins don’t check to ensure that they are using the right dispersion distance for pm2.5s and make any necessary modification to the application then in the light of my continued and publicly documented observations could bring what was probably an error into the area of negligence. This could open the way for litigation from both victims of the diseases and the deceased dependent relatives.

 

I also feel that it is unreasonable to receive no explanatory response about the 2.5pm dispersion distance from the applicant, despite asking on numerous occasions over a considerable period of time, as this wastes my time, particularly in checking over multiple documents and I should like to claim compensation for this wasted time.

    

Effectively from my point of view, I have had no answer but am left with the possibility that I may have been answered somewhere in around 500 complex and unindexed documents."

The reply I got was interesting, here it is:-

"Dear Mr Child

Thank you for your email.

The process is inquisitorial. The Examining Authority (ExA) has read your Deadline 1 submission and will ask questions arising from its content as it considers necessary. The next suite of written questions is scheduled to be published on 5 April 2019.

If you wish for your below email to be put before the ExA and considered for acceptance as an additional submission please confirm by response.

Kind regards

The Manston Airport Case Team"

I think what pins are saying here is that as part of the process pins will, if asked in the right way, put difficult questions to the applicant and get answers.

Anyway back to local history and old photos 

Here are a couple of a flying boat at Margate in 1932

 Much more recently here are some that Simon Moores sent me when we were preparing his book Thanet From the Air together in 2005

Here is the link to the book

We always have some books about Manston in the bookshop, the only one we publish is, Twilight of the Pistons. Here are some pictures from that.

and here is the link to the book

Work wise here in the bookshop 

here is the link to the books that went out today

Manston Airport, bigger than Heathrow and Gatwick?

Before I start on this I should point out that I have have a bit of history when it comes to Manston and other UK provincial airports. Back in the 1960s we would take our little Morris car and park it on the edge of the airfield clutching our £40 allowances and our passports, we would climb the steps up to the towering DC10 and in a few hours be transported to Spain or Italy, where the sun always shined, the food and wine were cheap...

Now of course it's the fast train, underground to the departure gate and less fun at greater expense.

  Ploughing through the latest tranche of Manston docs

Deadline 3 submissions I came across this interesting

series of documents  Published today on the pins website containing the map above and an explanation.

Manston Update comments on UK planning website

This is the link to the 2,500ish representations of interest in the Manston airfreight hub DCO application 

I aim to add to this post when I have read some

Update the same figures in different places on the internet, so probably right, I haven't had the time to count:-

2080 representations

1058 oppose the development (50.9%)

973 support the development (46.8%)

49 registered an interest only (2.3%) 

Old local photos bit more watercolour and a bit of Manston stuff.

 I am getting a bit better with the lighting where I have moved my desk to and using the camera in my very cheap smartphone.

 I will try and sort the worst of them out later

While I am supportive of a local passenger airport I don't support building a giant airfreight hub at Manston.

I do  Manston posts from time to time starting with https://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2008/08/infratill-v-gateway.html over 10 years ago and if I have remembered to tag them they all come up by clicking on this link https://thanetonline.blogspot.com/search/label/Manston%20Airport and every time you get to the bottom of a page clicking on the “Older Posts” link there.

At the moment there is a fire at Westwood near to the airport at Manston, what is burning there is 6,000 bales of rubbish, plastics, paper, cardboard, labels, and other corrugated materials, so apart from the fossil fuel derived plastics which will be about as nasty as kerosene, probably not as bad for you as aviation kerosene.

I reckon that one bale is about  tonne or less and that frankly if you have smelt the fire at all over the past few days then the deadly particulate matter from jet engines at Manston will come your way, reduce your life expectancy and increase your chance of getting dementia.

You can't smell particulate matter and the smallest,  2.5pm also called 2.5 micron particulates travel through the air for miles.

I think every cargo plane movement at Manston will burn at least 3 tonnes of fuel on the ground at Manston, this is based on the planes and plane engines that RiverOak say they are going to use in their application documents.

If you have read their application you would have to have read about 400 pages a day since they submitted their 11,000 page application around the beginning of the month, so if anyone says the have, they may be being economical with the truth.

The absolute minimum number of freight movements to qualify for a DCO is 10,000 so 1 tonne for the ground movement and 2 tonnes on the runway means 30,000 tonnes of aviation kerosene burnt per year here in Thanet.

Taking the, less than 6,000 tonne fire at Westwood and comparing it, my first thought is how much will burn and how much have the fire brigade managed to put out.

On a more cheerful note the weather was so nice today that I had my brunch outside on the sundeck of The Royal Victoria Pavilion today

 Not much progress with my watercolour from that seat there as I have a lot on at the moment.

This is the link to the photos of the books we put out in the bookshop today

This is the link to the photos I took at lunchtime

Will the Manston DCO make men stupid?

For me, while I quite like the idea of a small regional airport at Manston I am not keen on an airfreight hub there because of the amount of freight aircraft movements that are needed to trigger a DCO combined with the amount of unfiltered fuel that needs to be burnt on or near the ground for each movement.

However you look at it, each movement, one landing or takeoff would burn about enough fuel here in Thanet to take a family car all the way around the equator, with the fewest number of movements being in the 10,000 a year bracket, the people up wind of this burn up, will be breathing it in. Particularly in our coastal towns to the north and east of Manston and the takeoff flight path, with the onshore breeze holding it in and added to the existing pollution, it isn’t looking good for men of a certain age.    

What is it that the BBC are trying to say here https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-45326598

“Researchers believe that the negative impact increases with age, and affects men with less education the worst.”

In these days of political correctness, what the BBC mean by “men with less education” is another one of those wosisnames.

Have they singled out those educated in The University of Life? Who are they?

Do you err “you know wot I mean” When bruv and geez turn up wiv a form from the government, do you say “I’ve lost my reading glasses.” “The misses does forms.” Well that type of fing?? How is your differential calculus this morning, “I’ve lost slide rule” quadratic equations, “definitely to do with four” squares init.

gov data gis mapping at http://naei.beis.gov.uk/data/gis-mapping is looking pretty bad on the old arsenic front this morning.

So is this turkeys voting for wosisname? What about women, is this a case of discriminatory pollution, will women who are wot? Intellectually challenged be like the youf. I just asked some and here is what they have to say. “you is like well old init, so you is like well fick init.”

This could of course be a conspiracy theory put out by the Chinese with an, er cell at Yale University in the US, have they been got at? Is it something to do with Trump?

With me it’s the academic papers I’ve been reading over the past few years, now as it were, coming into the public domain it seems breathing in all that arsenic may be compensating for other aspects of, what was it? Mi old alma mater and er universities where every naming could be construed as a shaming/shamming, including life.    

I am wondering whether the map has some impact on why the Scots elected to stay in the EU

Flight workers and fantasies a premature Manston post

Ramsgate's latest aviation worker has been busy reorganising seagull's flightpaths for the convenience of diners on the sundeck.

Today is the resubmitted Manston DCO acceptance deadline, not a tweet from RSP since Jul 16 this is the link to their Twitter feed   as the DCO process is supposed to be one of public engagement, this sort of thing seems very strange to me.

Pins have put a "today's the day" message on their website, perhaps they are waiting for RSP to say something.

Since the resubmission I have tried to engage with RSP on the advice of pins, this is a bit of an uphill struggle, best read from the bottom up, this is the link to the emails I don't think it is very hard to see why I gave up.

Anyway delving about looking for some answers I note that the UK Parliament website has published the correspondence about our MP Mr Craig Mackinlay's flutter with aviation this is the link to it

Anyway noted here as to my mind the failure to have published the decision by either RSP or PINS by mid afternoon on the deadline day is significant intisself and needs recording.

If I were to make a wild guess, I would think something along the lines of a recommendation to withdraw combined with the using of our political "big guns" 

Another possibility is that this pins zen

"If the application is accepted, we will:

• On the day of the decision publish the acceptance decision and the Adequacy of Consultation Representations received from the relevant local authorities."

"If the application is not accepted, we will:

• Publish the decision letter and reasons why it hasn’t been accepted."

This could be interpreted as not publishing the decision today means it wasn't accepted, it's now 5pm on decision day and still nothing that I can find.

Accepted now This is the link to the acceptance letter 



Development Consent for the upgrade and reopening of Manston Airport Notification of decision to accept an application for examination I refer to the above application for an Order granting development consent made under section 37(2) of the Planning Act 2008 (PA2008), and received by the Planning Inspectorate on behalf of the Secretary of State on 17 July 2018. The Secretary of State has decided to accept this application for examination. In reaching this decision, the Secretary of State has:  in respect of section 55(3)(e) had regard to the matters set out in section 55(4), and concluded that the applicant has complied with Chapter 2 of Part 5 of PA2008; and  in respect of section 55(3)(f), had regard to the extent to which those matters set out in section 55(5A) have either been complied with or followed, and concluded that the application (including accompaniments) is of a satisfactory standard. Please be aware of your duties under:  sections 56, 58 and 59 of PA2008;  Regulations 8, 9 and 10 of The Infrastructure Planning (Applications: Prescribed Forms and Procedure) Regulations 2009; and  Regulation 13 of The Infrastructure Planning (Environmental Impact Assessment) Regulations 2009 or, for projects scoped after 16 May 2017, The Infrastructure Planning (Environmental Impact Assessment) Regulations 2017. National Infrastructure Planning Temple Quay House 2 The Square Bristol, BS1 6PN Customer Services: e-mail: 0303 444 5000 ManstonAirport@pins.gsi.gov.uk infrastructure.planninginspectorate.gov.uk Yours sincerely Simone Wilding Simone Wilding Head of Major Casework Management For and on behalf of the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government This communication does not constitute legal advice. Please view our Privacy Notice before sending information to the Planning Inspectorate.

Manston DCO update and my normal blog post

Since RSP/RiverOak announced on their website that they had resubmitted their DCO application I have been trying to find out why there isn't any mention of this on the pins website.

This is a picture of a plane at Nash Road.

pins have an unfortunate approach to publishing websites which means that they are inclined to insert old documents into the chronological list long after the date one would expect them to be published.

I think one appeared today dated 27th June

This is the link to it 

different to the other one dated 11th May and also called "Meeting Note"

This is the link to that 

I really am not sure if the info about Manston and the DCO is significant of anything much so I will start the blog post with historic Thanet aviation pictures and add some more to the blog later this evening.

Just what this is all about I really no longer know, I don't think there is much possibility that RiverOak intend to produce any sort of airport. It could be a land grab, or perhaps there are other possible motives.

I think that this quote translates as something like, we hope to get some money.

"The Applicant noted that there are often significant commercial sensitivities around funding arrangements and partnership agreements on such large infrastructure projects.

The Applicant was keen to demonstrate the availability and credibility of funding mechanisms whilst being cautious to only release into the public domain such documents as were necessary at a suitable time in the process so as not to prejudice its on-going relationships with funding partners."

Here in the bookshop work goes on as usual and this is the link to the books that got priced and put out on the shelves today we hope we got them all priced for less than you could buy a comparable copy online.

I have had a couple of skives to the Royal Victoria Pavilion aka Wetherspoons today

 Bit of a spot the difference again

 This has to be one of the best places to paint a watercolour from in the UK

I only have to tap the app on my phone and along come a cuppa accompanied by a bowl of fresh fruit and ice cream.

I did take a few photos today, I haven't looked at them yet as I don't get much time so it is a case of a direct cut and paste from the camera's SD card to my website, which hasn't quite finished yet.

Here are links to the photos

Link 1

Link 2  

Having had a look at the photos I have remembered work has started on the empty shop in York Street that was a butchers, the fair on the Pleasurama site doesn't look to be far off opening; the pictures tell the story.

Manston Airport DCO update

The picture is of the Red Arrows at Manston in 1968

This mainly relates to the meeting between The Department for Transport and the DCO applicant RSP Riveroak Strategic Partners on 11th May 2018

Here is are the links to the documents on the pins website

Meeting Note 

Detailed record of the Inspectorate’s observations and advice.


OK early days in trying to understand what these documents mean

I think the main issue in the whole thing is about what constitutes a NSIP Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project and this boils down not to the size of the new RSP project but to the increase in size from when Manston was running before to what it would be after RSP had increased the amount of aircraft it could handle.

So I think that the planning inspectorate have taken the number of flights (strictly movements takeoff or landing) per year permitted under the previous CAA license around the 23,000 ball park and asked RSP to show they will increase the number to 33,000. Not worked it out yet but this looks around 60 flights a day probably with about 6 flights per night.

I think RSP took the Manston capacity as 0 and I don 't think this will work.

I also think that anyone who attended the consultations realised that there was an issue with notifying people that the consultations were happening, I think something went wrong with their postal drop, when I last discussed it with one of the RSP reps they seemed to have accepted that there had been a serious problem, but not worked out how serious.

For me all the way along the line one of the biggest difficulties has been that I can't find a good sound argument from anyone supporting RSPs plans. So mountains of technical guff, but simple stuff like why people wanting to fly themselves or freight would drive past the major London airports to Manston.

I think the funding statement is also a big hurdle for RSP I think they would have to prove that they had sufficient legitimately sourced money to at the very least buy the Manston site based on an open market valuation.

I see this as a very significant Thanet news story that none of the local news sites seem to be able to report, hardly anything on social media either.

Is this the end of the RSP DCO I wonder?

this is a blog post in progress

Manston and the Stonehill Park mixed use development plans

As I am sure most people will know the latest planning application related to this one has gone live on the Thanet District Council planning website, here is the link https://planning.thanet.gov.uk/online-applications/applicationDetails.do?activeTab=summary&keyVal=P8EJ3KQE00300

I have reservations about the link continuing to work as the TDC planning website has a bit of a
history of this, so here is the planning ref too OL/TH/18/0660

Clicking on the documents tab on that page brings up the application documents and the responses
from organisations and members of the public either supporting or objecting to the planning
application.

On the whole I support the objectives of the scheme, more jobs, houses, facilities etc. As a bit of a
self confessed petrol head I am particularly interested in the expanded historic aircraft facilities and
like I assume most local aviation enthusiasts I hope to shape the development of these at the
planning stage.  

As with all of the large Thanet developments I am interested in the history of the site and concerned
about the environmental implications of developing it.

The elephant in the room with the Manston site has been hopes to retain it as a regional airport
overshadowed by plans to develop it as an airfreight hub, or other motives, possibly a land grab
or what has actually happened which is benefits politicians and for developers.

Of course for those of us living in Thanet the stick of having an airfreight hub’s pollution knock a
few years off our lives has made the mixed use development into something of a carrot.
Even taking that out of the equation the SHP developers have a very good record in terms of
facilitating employment locally. Their previous project in this area, Sandwich Discovery Park,
is now the main source of quality employment locally.

Historically the now vacant, or at least only in temporary use for operation stack, Manston Airport
site hasn't produced much in terms of economic return. Back in 1916 when the first cpo for military
use took place, the site was pegged out as housing plots because the farm there had gone
bust as the soil was too thin to farm.

The land classification of the the site is also a bit strange, while it looks green, because it was an
airport the site is classified brownfield and so doesn’t have any of the protections associated with
a greenfield site or agricultural land.

I can’t see any hope whatsoever of it turning into a viable passenger airport, passenger flights
now involve taking the fast train to London and the tube to the right part of the the airport.
This leaves the airfreight flights, which seem to be fairly low on job creation and high on
environmental problems. In simple terms, if you live in Thanet the noise pollution from the
freight planes is likely reduce achievement in some of the schools, the air pollution is likely
to reduce your life expectancy and the overall effect on quality of life is that it is likely to be
substantially reduced. Oddly enough this information doesn’t come from any sort of anti airport lobby,
but from the documents produced by RSP the firm that want to build the freight hub.   

With the airfreight hub DCO I have considerable reservation about its real motives and am really
only accepting what it has actually achieved so far i.e. the changing of the district council
administration to Conservative and the failure to set a local plan giving something of a free for
all for developers.

My take on this one, which is open to change from better informed and clarified input, is roughly.
The absence of the local plan really means that either this application is approved locally with
sensible constraints developed from constructive local feedback, or it is likely to go to the
planning inspector and be passed without much local input. But then so much of this depends
on the status of the local plan and whether national government and the planning inspectorate
count the local plan, that should have been replaced by now, as meaning anything at all.

A very considerable problem here is the concern about the much greater impact of the airfreight
hub is giving this application a very easy ride in terms of informed and substantiated but constructive
comment.

Personally my main reservation, which would also count to the same extent for the RSP
proposals is engaging in industrial, commercial, research and aviation activity on top of the
drinking water aquifer. Obviously given a conventional planning consent then it is the restrictions
here that would form a key part of the S106.

The main thing with these major local applications is to try and read them and respond to them
as planning applications, my understanding is that most weight will be given to to people who
live within the Thanet area. Of course the political side to this is another matter altogether.

I think for me a big issue is just how time consuming the big Manston related applications are,
reading some of the responses to the application, it is pretty obvious that some of the respondents
hadn't actually read the thing or even tried to read part of it.

Temporary withdrawal of Manston DCO application

RiverOak Strategic Partners has temporarily withdrawn its DCO application in respect of Manston Airport. This is not uncommon with DCOs and RSP is in dialogue with the Planning Inspectorate in order that the application can be resubmitted as soon as possible.

Click here to read the letter submitted to PINS on Friday 4 May.

http://rsp.co.uk/news/temporary-withdrawal-of-application/

Ms Susannah Guest
 The Planning Inspectorate
Temply Quay House Temple Quay
Bristol BS1 6PN
Your Ref Our Ref ADW/166055.0003 Date 4 May 2018
Dear Madam Manston Airport project reference TR020002 This letter is to notify you that our clients, RiverOak Strategic Partners Ltd, are withdrawing the application submitted on 10 April 2018 and are engaging with the Planning Inspectorate with a view to resubmission as soon as possible.

Yours faithfully

Bircham Dyson Bell LLP

This is a picture of a plane at Nash Road.

My understanding is that were RiverOak, RSP to apply for a DCO again they would have to start again. Of course where the intended result to be scuppering the local plan, which is a sort of developers charter, and changing the TDC administration to a Conservative one then the DCO application was very successful indeed.

This begs the question, was the application rejected? I guess the answer here is in the, did RiverOak suddenly decide that 11,000 pages wasn't enough or that they had made a mistake somewhere along the line and need to get busy with the tipex.