Manston airport site DCO delay due to “impact of Covid 19 on planning staff,” says MP

92 Comments

1. Once again Roger Gale has a strange relationship with the truth. As PINS state on their website: “The Examining Authority issued a Recommendation Report to the Secretary of State on 18 October 2019.” The only thing awaited is the Secretary of State’s decision, which given the complete lack of need, the lies about jobs exposed fully by the government’s own report, and the horrendous impact on the surrounding population, particularly Ramsgate’s, will clearly be a big fat NO. I suspect there’s a brown envelope campaign underway. Nothing to do with Covid at all – which also reduces further the likelihood of a successful operation.

   • Sounds like a libellous statement to me.

     • You clearly don’t understand the law of libel. Incidentally I emailed PINS to ask if they could shed any light. Their response “Thank you for your email.

       The decision remains with the Transport Ministers.

       Please check the project webpage for updates in the coming days.

       Kind regards
       The Manston Airport Case team

2. Funny I spoke to PINS & DfT this morning and they know nothing & couldn’t offer any reason for the delay

   • So did I.

     • With all due respect, Kathy, if this is the response from both DfT and PINs – and, as you say in your final line on the piece, the Planning Inspectorate has confirmed that “The decision is currently with Transport Ministers”, why have you run this piece with the headline of Gale’s ill-informed and clearly incorrect view that the delay is “due to impact of Covid-19 on planning staff”?

       If your intention is to show that the story here is that our local MP feels it necessary to lie and cover up for those Ministers, perhaps this should be made more explicit. Your headline is extremely misleading and clearly incorrect.

3. More spin from the self confessed spokesperson for RSP, Roger Gale.

   PINS has confirmed their report remains unchanged from October.

   Grant has confirmed the decision is with his aviation minister.

   Stop this Roger, just stop it. Why are you SO obsessed with landing a cargo plane over our head every 10 minutes? Why?

   SAVE RAMSGATE

   • Roger Gale thinks houses should be built on brownfield sites, not on greenfield sites. Apart from the former Manston airport site, that is.

4. This is palpable nonsense. The decision was made by the Planning Inspectorate in October last year. What’s happening now is nothing to do with the PI and everything to do with this completely inept government.
   Coronavirus hasn’t got in the way of Brexit: why should it affect a no-brainer decision like Manston?

5. Also 6 DCO aplications that were delayed with Manston until the 6th May have all been approved these were infrastructure applications so for Roger Gale to say C19 is the cause of the delay is a blatant lie. Something is not right here.

6. How dare Ms Constantine say the majority of Ramsgate voters do not support saving MANSTON Airport and RSP plans. This simply is not true and that is primarily why she was not elected our MP to represent us.

   • She’s never stood as a candidate in a general election…

     lol

   • Because it’s true Annie. That is why Labour and the Greens did so well in the locals, just in case you didn’t notice, and they stood on an anti-Manston ticket.

   • When I walked round Ramsgate last year I saw many “No Night Flights” posters in people’s windows.
     I saw no “Save Manston Airport” posters. Not one.
     I’ve no idea what conclusions you can draw from this.

   • Well said Annie, I always thought Labour, always support the creation of Jobs, obviously, Ms Constantine doesn’t.

   • However, Roger Gale MP for Riveroak has been telling everyone that the majority of Thanet residents are supportive of the RSP scheme.
     Truth is, no one knows as there hasn’t been a proper survey of the whole of Thanet on the matter. Of course, such a question would need to be ‘Do you support the opening of a 24/7 freight airport?’

7. As usual Rodger the Dodger is talking rubbish it is no longer in the hands of the planning inspectorate it is entirely down to the department of transport and the secretary of state Shapps now.

8. Another unacceptable delay and the Dft should be taken to task for the lack of communication yesterday when the decision was due. The only additional factor worth considering now that was not known last October was the huge reduction in plane movements into UK and global airports and which are never likely to reach pre pandemic levels. There was already plenty of spare air freight capacity at existing and better located UK airports than Manston and now there will be more than enough for the foreseeable future. This decision needs to be made now so we can get on creating the sustainable economic growth that Ramsgate and Thanet so need not some fantasy about reopening an airport that has never been viable since military used ceased.

9. Oh dear so covid 19 stops something else, shambles yet again.
   It would appear no one has the guts to say yay or nay!

10. So, do you honestly think you can just pick up the phone, dial pins number, and be put through to a member of staff, in the front line of this dco?? Don’t you think these people have better things to do than to answer the phone to a random member of public, and divulge this kind of information…. Beggars belief

    • Thank you Painterman for a logical response. I am sure no member of the public just rang up PINS/DtT at all. So easy to say, no evidence of said contact offered. The level in NIMBYISM is deafening.

      • actually PINS is extremely accommodating. I have spoken to them on several occasions during the examination.
        Maybe because you haven’t you feel obliged to show your ignorance.

    • Painterman you obviously don’t have a clue. PINS is extraordinarily helpful, and have nothing to do with the C19 response. I emailed them earlier and received a reply in 90 minutes confirming that the delay is nothing to do with them.

      • As have I and and had a reply within an hour saying that the decision is now with the Ministers. And that was this morning.

11. It is strangely surprising how the comments so far are all anti Jobs and money coming into a very deprived area with the only other viable option for the site is an overcrowded housing estate that would put severe strain on all the infrastructure of Thanet. More cars jamming up the roads. more strain on schools GP’s Hospitals not to mention a probable rise in crime.
    I am not for or against a cargo hub. I am totally behind something that would bring much needed finance into the area and out of the two options RSP would have my vote every time. Just for the NNF brigade. I live under the main flight path.

    • The previous option for the ex-airport site was not “an overcrowded housing estate” but a mixed-use development. Unfortunately the previous owners got so frustrated by TDC’s behaviour that they eventually sold the site to RSP.

      If people don’t like driving on crowded roads they should have started using public transport years ago. And if they found that public transport was not good enough, they should have lobbied their MPs and councils for improvements.

      • In the same perspective Telling people to use public transport if they don’t like crowded roads. If you don’t like aircraft noise move away. That’s the simple answer! You Don’t want air pollution but don’t mind 6000 more cars in Thanet! All the don’t like change anti’s commenting I see.

        • But .. but .. there *isn’t * any aircraft noise! I can actually stay here, in my home in Ramsgate, and enjoy not hearing aircraft all day and all night. Isn’t that wonderful? I don’t need to move at all.

        • I don’t want air pollution and so I don’t want extra cars on the road. Anywhere, not just in Thanet.

          I like some kinds of change. I would really like to see a drastic change in the number of private cars on the roads. I would like to see better,more frequent public transport with integrated timetables so that you don’t miss a connection by just a few minutes.

          I don’t say “If you want to live near an airport move near one”. Why do airport supporters so often tell people who don’t want to live near a noisy, dirty airport to move?

    • That is an interesting comment however the same number of houses as originally proposed under SHP have been moved to green fields outside Birchington and Westgate. The relief road KCC Highways but in the plan for the Manston site has now been mothballed.
      So same number of houses and no relief road. Rather unfortunate

12. i don’t see how karen constantine can say the whole of ramsgate doesn’t want a cargo hub without having a vote by the whole of ramsgate. just saying that ramsgate is against it just to try to win a few votes is absurd. you need to ask everyone before you can put out a statement like that. i thought labour were supposed to support the workers and jobs. then they wonder why they lost the last election. try to think of the. future and not just the here and now. with this virus costing jobs i would have thought a business that is trying to create jobs should be supported. with the new planes around today, pollution will not be a problem. pollution would be a problem with all those houses and cars that labour obviously want instead of an airport.

    • The whole of Ramsgate did vote in the last local elections. They overwhelmingly elected representatives to Ramsgate Town council – and Ramsgate reps to TDC – predominantly from Labour and Green parties who very publicly ran a campaign that was in no uncertain terms strongly opposed to re-opening the airport.

      As for the tired jobs argument, in order to provide jobs, a business has to be viable, no? Even Sally Dixon – who wrote the Azimuth Report that was RSP’s business case for Manston – admitted during the hearings that she was not asked to look at viability and there is nowhere in RSP’s application that shows viability. And that was before Covid.

      You may have missed the news, but airports up and down the UK – including Gatwick and Heathrow – are laying off staff in their hundreds and well-established airports, including London City, are at serious risk of closure. What on earth makes you think that Manston – with its long history of failure and led by Tony Freudmann, with his 26+ dissolved businesses and multiple failed airports – is going to succeed where they are failing?

      You might also want to look at RSP’s latest set of accounts – filed as recently as 30 April this year. £18.1m in debt and with further debts of around £9m across the rest of its UK subsidiaries. No sign anywhere of this mythical £300m.

      So, in summary, no money and no business case? No jobs. Unless you want the same kind of jobs people were offered at Lahr International Airport during Fredumann’s last failure, immediately before launching his latest wheeze? You know … the kind that end with the airport going bust less than a year after he took it over, with airport workers going months without pay? Look it up. And wake up.

      • Sorry – typo correction – RSP’s latest accounts show they have debts of just £13.1m. So that’s OK then.

13. Painterman yes you can, shows how little you know. I have the direct number for Richard Price at PINS who is the contact for the Manston DCO. And anyone can ring the DfT. 0300 330 3000 try it

14. Don’t always agree with Karen C, as she knows, but she’s spot on this time. There was never going to be a good time for opening a last century polluting facility on the site of the justly famous wartime airfield, but surely this is now an even more farcical proposition. Anybody with money to throw away should invest it in extra aviation capacity.

    • wartime airport was on northern grass area NOT currunt runway side

15. Airlines across the globe in the process of going bust.

    The airport will open… and then go bust.

    lol

16. JRS 75% of RTC councillors were voted in on an anti-airport mandate and MacKinlay never mentioned Manston once so I suspect Karen Constantine is correct.

17. What jobs? The towering 130 roles that went when it last went bust, for the fourth or was it the fifth time? Surely nobody believes the made up figures from RSP?

    The vast majority of Ramsgate does not support this cargo hub, irrelevant of their voting intentions.

    Manston isn’t political, it’s a failed airport dream kept alive by sentiment and anti housing feeling.

    • There will be 6 billion new jobs.

      And one new toilet.

18. The biggest joke is the houses are still coming but on every greenfield site in Thanet instead so well done all you airport supporters you now have more houses being built than ever would have been at Manston due to the local plan being scuppered

    • And that is exactly it, Thanet will still get the houses regardless of what happens at Manston.

19. Manston had a foam laying runway and a fireschool. Lots of firefighting foam was used there. It is highly persistent and highly toxic. 150 feet of fissured chalk below the runway is the public water supply aquifer drawn at Lord of Manor for many years.

    The Environment Agency had scheduled tests for ground contamination at Manston. I understand KCC is due to test Pegwell former landfill (Nature Reserve) for polychlorinated bi phenyls

    I really don’t understand the cognitive dissonant versions of reality that Karen Constantine and Roger Gale occupy.

    But in a way I hope the secretary of state gives Riveroak the nod. So I can watch the next episode of “Thanet Self Imposed Folly” unfold.

20. Blaming the civil servants, blaming the virus, blaming anyone but themselves! This Tory government has to be the most dangerous and treacherous.
    We are becoming the Trumpian 51st state – a gangster state!

21. Dear all

    Reported to SFO Last night due to GY name on document as Bircham Dyson Bell an offshore leaks company tied with Mossack fenseca

    • What does that all mean. Please don’t threads that use abbreviations and phrases people understand. Use plain English

22. Gale is needing to go as to promote criminals…

23. Good job the government are not trying to organise a party in a brewery. How can a so- called government with 80 MPs majority be so useless ????? Also what are Labour thinking of by opposing the re Opening of Manston Airport do they not want people to have jobs.

    • What jobs? In the most unlikely event that a DCO is granted, and subsequently an even more unlikely event that planes ever fly from the blessed place, the number of jobs in this (imaginary) highly automated cargo hub would be minimal and menial. ATC duties (such as they would be) would be carried out remotely, says RSP.

    • Ann, I. Very sorry you have been taken in by the jobs lie. If you read RSP’s own submissions you will see that they have included in the jobs count foreign farm workers producing fruit and many others not in the UK let alone Thanet. Its all a hoax to divide the community and suppress opposition. The politicians should be thoroughly ashamed.

24. As an outsider, I am guessing that Covid has catalysed a re-think.

25. I expect all those opposing reopening of mansion live near by and have moved to Ramsgate long after the airport was first open !atop all the whining and let’s get it up and running.

    • Ah! I see. When fact based logically constructed argument fails, you can always turn to insults.

    • Does it matter how long someone’s lived here? The pollution and noise of a nearby airport would affect all Ramsgate residents.

26. Typo I meant to say stop all the whinging

    • The “whingers” seem to be those who support an airport.

27. If in the unlikely event of the DCO being passed there would have to be many questions answered as to why. It really doesn’t make any sense and the refusal answer should have been made months ago.

28. All of you anti airport do talk a load of rubbish.especially councillor Constantine.where does she get her facts from must be out of her frazzled head.there will always be a need for a cargo hub as when everything gets back to normal there will be no slots again at LHR LGW STN. LTN. wake up everyone and give facts that are true and well founded.Sir Roger Gale has worked very hard on this project and deserves better.he actually goes out of his way to get the facts correct For the government to use Covid 19 as an excuse for delaying is sheer laziness on their behalf.everyone else who is working from home do not have these problems.

    • Ah! The facts! Ok.
      Manston is in the wrong place, situated as it is in the SE corner of England. A cargo hub needs to be in the centre, like East Midlands airport is. Falcon suggested that even with £25M spent on infrastructure such as rail head and road upgrades, Manston would be unlikely to turn a profit in 30 years.
      Manston is not needed. Most freight comes in the belly hold of passenger aircraft, and despite the (until recently) problems with capacity at Heathrow, other airports (not least Stansted and East Midlands) have spare capacity. The demand for air freight has been falling for a decade. See the reports by York and Avia.
      So there’s some facts.
      Some more: a consequence of the CV outbreak is that airlines are going bust left right and centre. There is now huge overcapacity at every airport in the UK.
      Do you have some facts, too?

29. I saw that it was more in favour than again st ghis, the delay us nit good enough it just makes those that are negative bricks go put in their fire. I gave worked in gravel mist of my life and ut UX exa fly what this area needs engineering training and staff at a fully working airport and cargo which will be needed when the Brexit thing gets put back on the agenda. Those us so much untruth that keeps circulating where do the think UF they had houses on ghd land after they are built where will the jobs come then. Keep a posative attitude if thanet can offer something like aviation down here it will bring mire prospects for other industries. It dosent seem right that a delay once again let’s hope the right decision is made to give us back our airpirt

30. Back to the disturbing Thanet localism I see Richard. You do know the Wantsum silted up several hundred years ago. The last time I looked, we lived in a democratic society. Sorry about that.

31. I have been told by someone in the know that Manston Airport is going to get the go ahead. So watch this space.

    • Why not tell us all, Ann?

32. I have told you Marva.

    • “All” as in “”everything you know that the rest of us don’t yet know”. Share this knowledge with your fellow-Thanetians.

33. Will you tell me, too, Ann?
    In fact, tell us all.
    Including Rodger “Windy” Gale, and Tony Freudmann of RSP, neither of whom seem to have a clue as to what’s going on!

34. None of us are clear which version of the report Roger is referring to, as the PINS report is long completed. If there is still work to be done on the Inspectors report, the one that was submitted in October, what work is this?

    • This is a direct quote from a PINS email received today:

      “We are unable to comment on statements made in the media. Suffice it to say the Recommendation Report that was sent to the Transport Ministers on 18 October 2019 will be published alongside the Minster’s decision in the same form as it was submitted.

      The decision currently remains with the Transport Ministers; please check the project webpage for updates in the coming days.”

      So if Sir Rog says the PINS report is not complete then he is either ignorant of the facts or he is duplicitous. Your call.

35. Andrew)I am not insulting anyone ,I am just saying that the airport was there a lot longer than many of the people who are complaining , if they did not want to live by an airport they should not have moved there

    • you are insulting the facts however
      Commercial aviation started in 1959 the year AFTER the USAF were asked to go because of the noise disturbance.
      Since that time Manston has failed to make a single profit and some spectacular failures most notably when Tony Freudmann was in charge in 2005.
      Ask yourself this question
      If Manston didn’t exist who in their right mind would built it today?

36. I moved to Ramsgate 3 years ago in the hope of a long and peaceful retirement. The eastern end of Manston’s runway is a mile from where I live. This means that aircraft approaching from the east have to be 300 to 400 feet above my property in order to maintain the shallow angle required for a safe landing (researched using aviation data on the internet).

    Based on 365 x 12 hour days a year RSP would have 4,380 hours to accomodate the 18,000 flights they plan if the DCO is succesful and Manston operates at full capacity. This means a flight would take off or land every 15 minutes. Even if RSP were permitted to operate 24 hours a day this still means a flight every 30 minutes.

    I hope the supporters of the airport are aware of the implications of this level of flight activity on the whole of Thanet – they are huge and overwhelmingly negative. In addition and on a personal note perhaps Roger Gale would like to swap properties with me for 6 months or so if Manston re-opens. Then he could experience the delight of having transport aircraft flying 400 feet above his head throughout the day.
    I suspect I know what his answer would be.

    • Roger Gale has already stated his family are unhappy about the noise and pollution from Heathrow.
      That is on public record

    • If you only moved to Ramsgate three years ago, did you solicitor and your pre-purchase searches not reveal that there was an on-going issue concerning the re-opening of Manston airport? You only have yourself to blame.

      • I would so like to copy the airport supporters’ technique and say to them “Why don’t you move near an airport if you’re so keen to hear aircraft noise?”! After all, they know what all the research and surveys say about the likelihood of there being a viable airport at Manston.

        But no, I won’t be so petty. As far as I’m concerned they can stay in Thanet and suffer the peace and quiet of no low-flying planes overhead.

37. Ann, who was this person and what sort of know has he/she got? My best guess is the the inspectors said it was a non flyer. If the inspectors had said yes, it would already be approved, the fact there is delay after delay, does point to some kind of quandary at the DFT.If Shapps overrules PINS, the courts will strike it down.If the DFT cannot make a water tight legal case for approval it will fail anyway.
    I have to say, that Ann is not exactly a reliable source of information.
    Perhaps it has to go to court.
    The Supreme Court will not worry about the pork barrel politics in Thanet; what they will look at is would a reasonable person, knowing all the facts conclude that opening Manston airfield up, is a soundly based project and that the SOS was acting rationally in overreaching PINS.
    Having heard the bad temper, misquoting of so called facts and the lack of kindness on both sides,a hearing by an unbiased third party might be the way forward.

38. Why should I and other people who don’t want an airport at Manston
    feel kind towards people who have made such a racket, metaphorically speaking (and literally in the case of Loudhailer Man) that recent councils have made irrational decisions leading to a) the departure of a company keen to develop the ex-airport site as a mixed-use development; b) a flawed local plan; c)the immanent building of thousands of new houses and flats on large areas of local countryside?

39. I do wish people would stop saying that MANSTON is in the wrong place. Dover is one of the busiest in the world it’s like saying Dover is in the wrong place. Manston Airport is the best thing could happen for Thanet.

    • Umm… You do know that Dover is not an airport but a Ferry port, right? So, y’know, being on the coast and at a point that provides one of the shortest crossings from UK to mainland Europe is kind of advantageous.

      The thing is about airports, though, is they don’t need to be on the coast at the furthest extremities of the UK but can actually be in the middle of the UK like, say, East Midlands, which provides really quick and easy access for freight to move through pretty much anywhere else in the UK…north, south, London, Scotland … You name it.

    • But it IS Ann! Read about the Golden Triangle. Read about logistics. Get real!

    • Dover is in the right place for crossing the Channel, obviously.

40. SO MANY NIMBYS

41. Hello Tony? I am desperate for some freeze dried fish. The UK has run out. Quick, ask Roger to help, he’s low on race horses, we cannot have this. Let’s try and open a massive cargo hub miles away from any transport infrastructure.

    I’ll be waving at the pilot as he spits aviation fuel over the harbour, don’t worry about the pollution, Craig will run the hoover round.

42. It’s all based on lies and hopes. What sort of National Significant Infrastructure Project has ever been given approval for a DCO based on no evidence of anything at all?
    What a load of BS by persons of supposed intelligence holding the towns of Thanet back year on year and decade on decade!

43. “The only virus I see are the antis”. I have just read this on a local facebook group.it was written by Trevor Shonk.

44. Although the for & against Manston camps are working themselves up in to a lather over the delay I would suggest that the Secretary of State for Transport currently has more important matters to deal with at the moment than this decision which in the national scheme of things is rather minor even though important to Thanet.

    • Like what? Is he personally printing visors on his 3-d printer? Organisations his family into sewing scrubs?
      Don’t forget:the PI submitted their report to the SoS in October last year – 6 months ago.
      And don’t overlook the fact that the CV pandemic is not getting in the way of the Brexit negotiations.
      I don’t see why this “rather minor” decision couldn’t have been ratified last year.

    • It is not the Secretary of State who is considering the matter. It is Nusrat Ghani, the Minister who has aviation in her portfolio.

45. Why do people insist it is an airport. It has no CAA aerodrome licence,no flight paths and most tellingly no planes. It was the sixth anniversary of its closure last Friday has anybody really noticed, was there a crisis in runway capacity ? No of course not. It is an ex-airport !

46. Made by: Andrew Stephenson (Minister of State for Transport)HCWS247

    Transport update
    I have been asked by my Right Honourable Friend, the Secretary of State, to make this Written Ministerial Statement. This statement concerns the application of 17 July 2018 made by RiverOak Strategic Partners Ltd (“the Applicant”) under the Planning Act 2008 for the proposed reopening and development of Manston Airport in Kent.

    Under sub-section 107(1) of the Planning Act 2008, the Secretary of State must make his decision within 3 months of receipt of the Examining Authority’s report unless exercising the power under sub-section 107(3) to extend the deadline and make a Statement to the House of Parliament announcing the new deadline.

    The Secretary of State received the Examining Authority’s report on the Manston Airport Development Consent Order application on 18 October 2019 and, following an earlier extension of 4 months, the current deadline for a decision is 18 May 2020.

    The deadline for the decision is now to be extended to 10 July 2020 to enable further work to be carried out before determination of the application.

    The decision to set a new deadline is without prejudice to the decision on whether to grant development consent.

47. What’s left to find out about RSP’s alleged plans to develop a cargo hub airport?

48. Marva Rees was Shonk’s comment in crayon

    • Surprisingly, no. Nasty thing to say though.