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Southend Council throws taxpayers’ money at Airport

For immediate release

Southend Council has finally answered a Freedom of Information request made in September by a SAEN[1] member. It shows the extent to which the Council has subsidised Southend Airport since the lease was sold to Regional Airport Ltd. in 1994.

In that time, the Council has received £1.3m in rent from the Airport, but has spent over £5.2m on a wide variety of projects at the Airport. These range from paying for legal fees to contributions of over £1m each for development of the new station and Air Traffic Control Tower. [2]

The fund from which these payments were made is known as the “Airport Development Fund” and this was set up when the Council sold the Airport land on which the Warners Bridge retail park now stands.

The Council claims this investment has benefitted taxpayers by “contributing to the economic well-being of the town”. However, to date it has resulted in a net loss to the Council of approximately £4m.

The losses are in fact even greater, as a clause in the Airport Lease makes provision for Southend Council to receive a share of profits if the lease is sold on. However, RAL easily avoided this by selling the London Southend Airport Company to Stobart rather than the lease.

Had the Council used these assets as a source of income, they would not now be facing the prospect of such savage cuts to the town’s services.

ENDS.

Notes to Editors

  1. “Stop Airport Extension Now” (SAEN) was formed to campaign against the runway extension at Southend Airport. The group is not opposed to the Airport itself, which has co-existed with the residents of Southend for many years. SAEN is against the runway extension, which would lead to a massive increase in flights and destroy the lives of the people living, working or going to school anywhere near the flightpath.
  2. A copy of the FoI request and response is available at http://www.saen.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/sbc-finance.pdf

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010 at 1:22 pm and is filed under Press Releases. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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