Lydd Airport

Publication date: 09-01-2008

The expansion of Lydd Airport has been called in for a public inquiry, which will take place in February 2011. We have registered as a 'Rule 6 party' which means we will be putting forward witnesses and cross-examining evidence put forward by the airport and their supporters.

In March 2007, CPRE published up-to-date, county-scale tranquillity maps for the whole of England. The Kent version showed clearly that Romney Marsh was the largest relatively tranquil part of the county – nowhere else is at as easy to feel that one has ‘got away from it all’. It is typical of modern Kent, however, that the peace and quiet of the Marsh is under threat from a major development proposal – one which seems shockingly ill-conceived, and which threatens to damage and degrade everything that makes the Marsh special.

The owners of Lydd Airport (officially named London Ashford Airport, or LAA) have submitted two planning applications to Shepway District Council. One is to build a new passenger terminal, the other is to extend the airport’s existing Tarmac runway by 444 metres. With the extension allowing the runway to take fully loaded, short-haul jet airliners such as the Boeing 737, the developers hope LAA will become a regional airport handling, in the medium term, two million passengers per annum (2 mppa).

There are many reasons why Lydd should not become a regional airport. It is less than two miles from a nuclear power station (at Dungeness), and hemmed in by two of the country’s most sophisticated MoD firing ranges (at Hythe and Dungeness), all of which have over-flying restrictions. There are areas of international, national and local nature conservation importance close to – and immediately adjacent to – the airport runway. The runway extension would completely destroy part of the Dungeness Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and cause significant damage to the Pett Levels Special Protection Area (SPA) and the Dungeness Special Area of Conservation (SAC). There are also 240 hectares (590 acres) of open-water bird sites within five kilometres of the airport, with one site alone – the Dungeness Gravel Pits – described by the RSPB as supporting ‘an average of 14,000 wintering birds’. For the airport to operate safely, ‘bird-hazard-management’ (bird scarers) will have to be widely used, which will, in effect, make large areas off limits to these birds.

People, as well as wildlife, will suffer from Lydd’s development. Tranquillity will be lost all across the Marsh and in the Kent Downs AONB, for even at 10,000 feet an airliner will drown out birdsong, adding an overlay of mechanical racket to the normal sounds of the countryside. For those in the airport’s flight path, though, the noise implications are far more serious. Aircraft on approach to Lydd during prevailing winds will follow the beam of an Instrument Landing System (ILS) which brings them over Hythe, Dymchurch, New Romney, Littlestone and St Mary’s Bay at hundreds, rather than thousands, of feet. Aircraft taking off to the west will have to make a sharp right turn, on full power, directly over the village of Lydd.

Proponents of airport development often argue that nearby residents are aware they live near an airport and should therefore expect that there will be noise. This is misleading, though: a single-engined Cessna on approach – the usual background noise for Lydd – is not practically comparable to a fully loaded 737, trailing kerosene fumes as it comes grinding in over the chimney pots of Greatstone-on-Sea. And the local economy will suffer along with quality of life: tourism, which provides one in four jobs on the Marsh, will be vital to the area’s future – yet who will want to stay directly under the flight path of a major regional airport?

If Lydd is allowed to expand, noise and air pollution will come from surface traffic as well as from aircraft. Lydd, remote from major highways and railways, is reached by small roads, some of which are acknowledged even by LAA as ‘currently operating at near capacity much of the time’. The airport owners acknowledge that 90% of passengers would travel to Lydd by car, and 95% of staff. The airport’s rail connections are dismal: the Environmental Statement which accompanied the planning applications suggested taking the train from Ashford to Rye (23 minutes, one train per hour) then a 13-mile taxi ride to the airport.

Lydd Airport’s planning applications – which are being considered by Shepway Council on 28 January – are almost certain to be called in for public inquiry by central government. When that happens, we will send in the eight pages of comments we submitted to Shepway in March 2007. Our opposition will be echoed by the RSPB and two local protest groups, and also by the South East England Regional Assembly, which has called for a halt to airport expansion across the South East. Support for the scheme is looking shaky, with only the district council and KCC lending significant official endorsement. We fervently hope the secretary of state sees that only one course of action is feasible: stopping this terrible proposition in its tracks.

Attachments:

Associated Districts

• Shepway

Associated Campaigns

• Transport
• Protected Landscapes
• Aviation
• Tranquillity
• Light Pollution