Since June 2008, the focus has been on a document we have been referring to as the “JAAP” – the “London Southend Airport & Environs Joint Area Action Plan”. This was to be a joint strategy between Southend and Rochford Councils setting out their intentions for the airport and the surrounding area.

Initially, we were presented with four options (a low, two medium and a high growth scenario) and “stakeholders” were invited to submit their opinions of these options to the first phase of consultation. We only found out about this consultation two weeks before the deadline and so had to react very quickly to let people know that the consultation was taking place and encourage them to respond.

The Councils intended to run a second phase of consultation between 3rd November and 12th December 2008 but this was mysteriously delayed. In December 2008, the owners of the Airport, Regional Airports Ltd., finally found a buyer in The Stobart Group and sold the airport lease to them for £16m.

The second phase of consultation eventually started on 16th February 2009. This asked for opinions on the Councils’ “Preferred Option” – the high growth option from phase 1, despite the fact that the vast majority of consultees had opposed that very option in the first consultation. Southend Council messed up the distribution of their “Have Your Say” leaflets which were to go to every household in the borough informing residents of the consultation and asking for their input. As a result of this, the consultation deadline was eventually grudgingly extended to 15th May.

It is now mid-October and the results of the second phase of consultation have still not been published. Rochford Council says that it is “not in the public interest” to release the results. However, we already have some of the results as the comments of anyone who submitted their response online are available for all to view. We have analysed these comments and the results can be seen on our website.

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The situation in June 2009

The second phase of the JAAP consultation has now concluded. Our initial analysis of the Consultation is now available.

The official consultation website can be found at:

http://rochford.jdi-consult.net/jaap/index.php

The third phase of consultation – the Statutory Consultation – is due to start in the Autumn and contributions to this will form the basis of the Public Inquiry which we anticipate should take place some time in the new year.

In the meantime, we need to collect as much evidence about the problems the airport causes now to illustrate how much worse it would be with two million passengers a year.

If you are woken by night flights, why not keep a diary of how this affects you?

No doubt there are plenty of other examples of damage being done which can be documented, photographed, videoed, recorded and measured, all of which will be valuable evidence to present to the Planning Inspector.

If you have any such evidence that you are happy to share, please forward it to the webmaster so he can compile it on our website.

IMPORTANT: When completing your consultation responses, please ensure that you make it clear that you are objecting to the plans. We found numerous examples in the consultation’s first phase where responses that were quite clearly objections had been disingenuously marked as “comments” so as not to count in the statistics.