Surrey Heath & Elmbridge holds its own Heathrow Consultation Event - Video
Surrey County Council Cabinet Member for Environment and Transport Mike Goodman has facilitated a Heathrow consultation event for Surrey Heath.
In a statement to the Residents Network he Mike said “I have long campaigned to give residents the opportunity to attend such an event and pleased that this is going ahead. Surrey Heath Councillors and supported by SHBC will be holding a Heathrow expansion event for residents that could be affected by aircraft noise from the planned third runway.”
The event will be on 22 May at Camberley Theatre between 12:00 and 19:30
Following pressure from Surrey County Council, the Government had agreed to hold two extra events to allow residents in Surrey Heath and Elmbridge to make their views known.
However, these extra events have been cancelled following the calling of the General Election.
Mike said “It is very frustrating that Government has pulled out of the additional public consultation events that were to be held in Elmbridge and Surrey Heath so that it could explain its position directly
to residents and respond to their concerns.
We remain determined to give residents the chance to make their views known before the consultation ends on 25 May. That’s why we have arranged this event on 22 May. There are two elements to the
consultation; Air space and the third runway at Heathrow so I encourage all residents who are concerned about the potential implications of expansion to attend.
We will capture the views that are expressed and send them on to Government to make sure that the local perspective is fully understood.”
Councillor Goodman explained that whilst the Camberley event would not have access to all of the material that has been used in the events run by Government, he was aiming to have as much information as possible available on the day to help residents understand what is being proposed.
We interviewed Mike about the event which you can see in this video:
May 20, 2017
I attended at Kingston Uni event, and was very dismayed by the attitude and presentations It was a “hard-sell” for Heathrow, with no information about the merits of Gatwick. Questions about increase in aircraft noise, air pollution, traffic congestion, increase in risk of air accidents and greater ground casualties than in Gatwick area were all met with vague responses, and no charts to show the total increase in noise and pollution. I was even told that it was impossible to measure pollution, therefore there was no information available, As for increase in night flying, vague assurances were given, limited to “scheduled” flights. Increased incidence of unscheduled flights, including freighters was (again) shrouded in vagueness. Road traffic congestion is to be
” eased by an increase in public transport!” ( How man tons of freight will it take to fill a single decker bus?) The recent warning by IATA that attempts to pass off the costs onto airlines could result in substantial loss of traffic to “rival airports such as Amsterdam”. It may be that this could be a fiasco to dwarf that of the St Helena airport! Anyone attending any further Heathrow sessions by MfT may find it instructive to press hard on all these issues.