The public consultation deadline over controversial plans to expand flights at London City Airport has been put back, it has been revealed. The deadline for responses to its Master Plan has now been postponed another month to October 18.
“This is clearly the action of an airport under pressure,” the Hacan East campaign lobby’s chair John Stewart claimed. It is astonishing that the airport didn’t realise from the start that people would be clamouring to find out how it justified the significant levels of expansion it is proposing.”
The organisation representing communities under the flight path across east London from the Isle of Dogs to Dagenham has been waging a campaign to prevent more flights because of the effects on noise and air pollution. They were backed by the mayor of Newham two weeks ago calling for a halt to the consultation until London City could show how it would tackle emissions. But the airport remained firm and insisted that the consultation deadline would finish on September 20 on the plans to almost double the number of landings and take-offs.
Mayor Rokhsana Fiaz called the consultation “fundamentally flawed” in a letter to the airport’s chief executive because of lack of information about how emissions would be tackled. Newham Council, like Tower Hamlets, declared a “climate emergency” earlier this year and was seeking more evidence about the plans to tackle pollution.
The airport has put on its website detailed papers on how it arrived at its figures. It wants to almost double the number of flights, get rid of the weekend noise break from Saturday 12.30pm until Sunday 12.30pm and bring in more early morning and late evening landings. The draft plan has “followed industry best practice in line with aviation policy”, the airport insisted.
Their spokesman said: “We recognise the challenge of climate change. Our record to date on air quality, noise and carbon reduction demonstrates our commitment to a change in sustainable aviation.”
The sudden climb down over the consultation deadline means a final Master Plan needs to be produced and then presented in a detailed application to Newham Council planning authority if the airport wants to go ahead with its expansion in the Royal Docks
Article originally appeared on Newham Recorder
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