Consultation

In every consultation Southend and Rochford Councils have held on the extension of the runway at Southend Airport, around 75% of respondents have opposed it. This has made no difference to the Councils, which have ploughed on with the plan regardless.

JAAP

JAAP is short for “Joint Area Action Plan” – a planning policy document shared between two or more Local Authorities. When we refer to the JAAP, we mean the London Southend Airport & Environs Joint Area Action Plan, being formulated by Southend Borough Council and Rochford District Council.

The JAAP consultation website can be found at http://rochford.jdi-consult.net/jaap/

JAAP Phase 1 – “Issues and Options” (26/06/2008 – 08/08/2008)

Phase 1 of JAAP consultation was extremely poorly advertised – to the extent that South East Essex Friends of the Earth (SEEFoE) only found out about it two weeks before the closing deadline when Rochford Council issued a newsletter. Southend Council gave the consultation no publicity at all. The Friends of the Earth group quickly put together a letter of objection for local residents to sign and delivered around 1,000 to people living closest to the airport.

In September 2008, SEEFoE organised a meeting about the intended airport expansion at Eastwood Community Centre and it was at that meeting that SAEN was formed.

JAAP Phase 2 – “Preferred Options” (16/02/2009 – 15/05/2009)

Consultation responses:

Publication of the full report on Phase 2 of consultation is still awaited. However, a rather feeble statistical breakdown is available at http://www.rochford.gov.uk/pdf/JAAP_representations_summary.pdf as a result of SAEN’s ultimately successful Freedom of Information request to obtain a breakdown of responses to the JAAP Phase 2 consultation. Rochford Council initially told us that it was not in the public interest to release the results of a public consultation.

As of March 2011, the Campaign for the Protection of Rural Essex has done the joint councils’ work for them and published their own analysis of responses to phase 2 of the JAAP consultation.

JAAP Phase 3: Statutory Consultation (not yet announced)

Examination in Public

Planning Application for Runway extension

On the rare occasions that Southend Council’s Planning website works, details of the planning application are available at http://saen.org.uk/planningapp.

Objections to Planning Application: