Biggin Hill Airport Olympic proposals rejected by Bromley Council
operating hours for the Olympic Games.
the lease so it could open from 6.30am to 11pm each day from July 13 to September
23 in 2012.
to 8pm at weekends.
the proposals, eight in favour and 10 abstain, before the council’s executive
rejected the airport’s application.
received opposed the plan with just 112 in favour.
as well as other fears including an increase in noise pollution.
news for the Princess Royal University Hospital, which lies beneath the flight
path.
noisy planes are flying over. Surely doctors and patients have a right to enjoy
a night’s sleep and work in peace. They will suffer from additional noise.”
been used as poor camouflage to change the modus operandi of the airport.”
Olympics are a very special event. I can see nothing unreasonable about the airport’s
request.
years after the airport was in operation.”
Now the Olympics are coming we must do everything we can to welcome it.”
said: “The council obviously had a rush of sense when they saw the large proportion
of residents who opposed the airport’s application.
that would have been caused by the airport expanding.”
airport in Leaves Green.
were “the thin end of the wedge”.
the long game.
operators.
at Biggin Hill Airport, the famous Battle of Britain fighter base now run as a
commercial airport. And they have won the latest skirmish against heavy odds.
and for permission to take fare-paying passengers Bromley FoE and three residents’
association formed an alliance called BRAAD – Bromley Residents Against Airport
Expansion.
days around the Olympic Games period to take extra flights, and also offered a
money sweetener to the council for every Olympics passenger flight landing there.
They used an advertising campaign and a professional PR company to tell their
story.
out that regular passenger flights had always been the airport’s objective. This
was confirmed when the group used the Freedom of Information Act to unveil correspondence
showing that the airport and the council had already discussed the possibility.
local groups to object. Many hours were used in producing and distributing leaflets
and posters, briefing the media and analysing the terms of the lease. Ray Watson,
Bromley FoE transport campaigner, said: ‘It became almost a full-time job’.
against 100 in favour.
They heard councillors picking up BRAAD’s arguments, such as demonstrating that
accommodating the extra flights did not require longer hours, that there was no
evidence to support the claim that extra jobs would be created and that no one
had put a figure on the ‘sweetener’ money.
there: the airport has already announced that it will make a further application
to loosen the conditions of its lease.