From: John Beckett, Woodcutters Avenue, Leigh
I fully agree with Peter Wexham in his recent article that Southend Council did not listen to residents’ concerns on the expansion of Southend Airport and its runway extension.
It is still very unclear what sort of planes will come under the restrictions, agreed by the council and Stobart Group, especially for night flights.
Also, with so many holiday companies going bust, with passengers left in the lurch abroad, how many holiday companies will risk coming to Southend Airport only to lose money and go bust themselves.
I really think Southend Council were conned into signing up with the Stobart Group*, and I don’t think they realise how it will affect the lives of so many people, especially in the Leigh and Belfairs area.
I have also read that freight aircraft flights have greatly increased at Stansted Airport – so it is obvious that the Stobart Group, being a freight company, will also see Southend Airport as a large freight area to exploit.
I hate to think of what could happen in the future to the nice area we live in Leigh and Belfairs with large freight aircraft overhead.
* Note from SAEN: The council actually left themselves with no choice about who would buy the airport lease due to the gross negligence they displayed when selling the lease to RAL in 1994 for one pound. While the lease itself was not allowed to be sold without the Council’s approval, it had been sold not directly to Regional Airports Limited (RAL), but to the London Southend Airport Company (LSAC) which was a wholly-owned subsidiary of RAL. This meant that when RAL wanted to dispose of the airport, they merely had to sell LSAC to someone else. On paper, therefore, the owner has not changed and RAL waltzed off with the full sale price which morally should have come back to the council. Coincidentally(?), the total sale price was almost exactly the same as the amount of taxpayers’ money the Council has ploughed into the airport since the 1980s.