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Farnborough Airport Consultative Committee

All UK airports are required to have a consultative committee to provide a forum within which issues that affect the local community and local environment are discussed. Farnborough Airport, the business airport for Europe, held its third consultative meeting recently. The local community were less than impressed.

Background: Farnborough Airport is the business airport for Europe. Against the wishes of the local community, it gained a CAA license and planning consent at the beginning of the year. TAG Aviation are the operators. Every airport is required to have a consultative committee. Questions have been raised as to the legitimacy of the Farnborough committee and the manner in which it is being run.

The third meeting of the committee took place at BAE Systems, afternoon Thursday 20 November 2003. The meeting was not as well attended by the public as previous meetings.

The previous meeting had a very heavy security presence. Could this be because CAAT were tipped of last time, but not this, and the BAE Systems mole within CAAT alerted his or her masters?

Little if any publicity in advance of the meeting. According to TAG, they did place a notice in the local paper (which?), but no one seems to have seen it. Members of the committee received their papers (and then not all papers) two days before the meeting.

There may one day be a web site for the committee!

Following the chairman's opening remarks, TAG introduce an independent secretary they have appointed.

Geoff Green 01256 679986

geoff.e.green@ntlworld.com

It is good that an independent secretary has been appointed, but it should have been the decision of the committee. Statement accepted without comment by the committee. At the last committee meeting, TAG were appointed as secretariat. The committee continued to behave as though TAG were still the secretariat.

Following this house keeping, Roland Dibbs (a Rushmoor councillor) launched into a childish diatribe into Hart council in general and a Hart councillor in particular. He then dropped one of the Rushmoor councillors from the committee. This was not in the gift of Dibbs, he had no authority to do so, and appears to have done so without any discussion or agreement by Rushmoor. Indeed it was news to a Rushmoor councillor present.

At the last meeting, a Hart councillor made a huge fuss about the imbalance of the committee, amongst other things (he also raised the so-called independent chairman being appointed behind the back of the committee by TAG and Rushmoor and the appointment of TAG as secretariat). Getting nowhere, he then stormed out of the meeting.

The membership of the committee should be one third each: local councils, TAG and airport users and local community. This works out at eight seats each grouping. Local councils have well in excess of their third, not helped by the fact Rushmoor has three seats, four if we count the Hampshire seat is occupied by a Rushmoor councillor. The losers are the local community.

Decreasing the Rushmoor seats by one and increasing the Hart seats by one, does not address this imbalance. Two seats for Rushmoor is more than sufficient, but these should be the two wards most affected by the airport, and occupied by councillors who understand the issues and represent their constituents. Dibbs meets neither criteria, he does not understand the issues and is there to represent Dibbs, as everyone saw every time he opened his mouth.

Having made a justified fuss at the last meeting about representation, Hart councillor Norman Lambert then remained virtually silent throughout the entire meeting, not even speaking out to defend the right of a Church Crookham resident to speak.

At the last meeting, the regular deviation of aircraft from agreed tracks was raised. TAG claimed it was rare, but this is not the experience of those on the ground. Since the last meeting, TAG have run a calibration aircraft to check their ILS, with observers on the ground. Their system was found to be slightly skewed, and has since been corrected(?), but this does not explain the wide track deviation that is often observed on the ground. To the surprise of everyone present, TAG admitted they do not monitor track keeping!

A major area of concern was the use of reverse thrust (this was also raised at the last meeting). According to the section 106 agreement between TAG and Rushmoor, it should rarely be used, but its use appears to be the norm. Pilots seemed to be saying the runway was of barely sufficient length, hence the widespread use of reverse thrust. Which then begs the question re the wording of the agreement, and could raise awkward questions on the aircraft licensed to use Farnborough. TAG admitted they were not logging the use of reverse thrust, let alone questioning its use or monitoring the sound levels.

TAG have introduced a hotline to enable complaints from the public. It has not been publicised, and unlike Gatwick, is not a free 0800 number.

A summary of complaints received was provided by TAG, but insufficient details.

Geoff Marks (rep FARA) complained that he was being refused data on aircraft movements. Under the section 106 agreement TAG are obliged to log every aircraft movement and associated data (eg aircraft weight, type etc) and supply this information to Rushmoor. Dibbs then launched a vicious attack on Geoff Marks, could not see why he should have the data, and for good measure emphasised neither should the public. He was highly criticised by both the committee and the public (matters of of democratic accountability). The matter was finally resolved by TAG offering to supply the data.

The data is needed for independent assessment of risk contours and noise contours. The local community trust Rushmoor even less than they trust TAG. The airport should never have been granted planning consent, but now that it is there we have to live with it. Rushmoor should have set in place a proper monitoring regime. They failed to do so. Most of the problems that are now being raised at the committee is due to the failure of Rushmoor to establish a proper regulatory and monitoring regime. Problems exacerbated by councillors like Dibbs who fail to serve the electorate.

Dibbs was asked what changes would be made to the Local Plan to accommodate any expansion by TAG under the fast track planning scheme Rushmoor are to adopt. He seemed incapable of understanding the question or its relevance and his reply was meaningless gibberish.

Toward the end of the meeting, Jenny Radley (one of the few genuine community people on the committee) tried to raise a series of problems faced by the people of Church Crookham. She was cut short by the chairman. The chairman even somewhat insultingly questioned whether she was representing the interests of the people she was on the committee to serve! She was not allowed to raise the issues. Nor was she allowed to have an expert witness address the committee. This had been decided beforehand (by who?), not by the committee. Her council member on the committee did not leap to her defence.

The constitution allows any member to bring along experts, who with the agreement of the committee, may address the committee. TAG's environment officer addressed the meeting, Rushmoor's officers have addressed previous meetings.

After the meeting the chairman was overheard bragging that he had stopped Jenny from speaking!

The chairing of the meeting was extremely biased. He summed up in favour of TAG, and tried to stop critical discussion taking place, cut short comments by members of the public, then ignored what they had said as though they had not spoken. This is hardly surprising. He was appointed to the committee at its last meeting, as an 'independent chairman', by TAG and Rushmoor. There had been no prior discussion by the committee of the requirement for such a chairman or the selection criteria. The background of this chairman was not mentioned. As manager of Fairoaks, he blocked any community representation on the committee. This eventually resulted in High Court action and he was slammed by the judge for his action.

The chairman has failed to even grasp the essence of why the committee meets or for what purpose it exits. Towards the end of the meeting he boldly stated the meetings were not for the public, but the public may attend! He made similar crass comments at the last meeting. He clearly lacks any understanding of 'consultation', and needs to read the guidelines produced by DfT and AEF.

It appears no lessons were learned from the Fairoaks judicial ruling.

This is the third meeting of the committee. A representative of Caroline Lucas MEP spoke at the meeting. She was not at all happy with what she had seen, and compared the behaviour unfavourably with Southampton, where she had recently attended. Unfavourable comparisons have also been made with City of London Airport.

It is bad, the best that can be said is that the meeting was marginally better than the last, which was better than the previous meeting. FARA raised a lot of matters of concern to the local community, and got backing from some of the councillors present, though not from Rushmoor, who supposedly represent constituents worst affected by the airport, living as they do immediately at the end of the runway.

At the previous meeting, the committee sat around a table, their discussions were unintelligible to the public. The arrangements on this occasion, where they sat behind a long table facing the public, was far better. Improvements can still be made: two microphones for the committee on either side of the chairman, and a roving microphone for the public.

There is an urgent need for independent observers to attend, especially from DfT, AEF and other consultative committees, for DfT to designate Farnborough under the Civil Aviation Act, the imbalance of the committee to be corrected, meetings to be properly publicised and information made available to the public, and the chairman to be removed from office. The committee should meet more frequently, three times a year is not sufficient.

Some time after the last meeting BVFoE had applied to TAG (as secretariat) to be on the committee. They were turned down by TAG as unsuitable. This was not mentioned to the committee.

Formal complaints have been lodged with Rushmoor re the disgraceful behaviour of Dibbs.

The next meeting of the committee will be: 2pm Thursday 18 March 2003 at the BAE Systems Conference Centre (alongside Farnborough Airport).

ref

Keith Parkins, Farnborough Airport Consultative Committee, Indymedia UK, 18 July 2003

Farnborough Airport, BVEJ newsletter, July 2003

Farnborough Airport Consultative Committee, BVEJ newsletter, August 2003

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