SOUTHEND Council has been inundated with more than 2,300 comments about the plans to extend the runway at Southend Airport.
Owner, the Stobart Group, wants to lengthen the runway by almost 1,000ft, pushing it across Eastwoodbury Lane, as part of a plan to reinvent the airport as a passenger hub handling more than two million passengers by 2020.
The deadline to make comments online has now closed, but interested parties can still have a say by writing to the council right up until the development control committee meeting on January 20.
Kiti Theobald, chairman of protest group, Stop Airport Extension Now, said the number of comments received so far only represented a tenth of all those living under the flightpath.
She added: “It sounds like a good response, but the council will dismiss it as small, because it doesn’t want to know.
“It is good to know so many people have gone to the trouble of writing, whatever their views.”
Neighbouring Rochford District Council’s development control committee has already voted not to oppose the plans.
The councils head of planning, Shaun Scrutton, backed the application as an opportunity to achieve at new controls on the airport, which would benefit the area and reduce its environmental impact.