The second meeting of Farnborough Airport Consultative Committee took place 2pm Thurs 17 July BAE Systems. Another meeting, another farce.
Another meeting, another farce.
The meeting was held at a time and place (2pm BAE Systems HQ) making it
difficult for people to attend unless they took the day off work and had
their own transport.
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2003/07/274201.html Note: BAE Systems have injunction on several people preventing them from
going on to BAE Systems premises. Thus the meeting was not open to the
public as required.
Caroline Lucas MEP had hoped to attend, she was in the locality during the
evening, but unfortunately had a prior engagement during the day.
Contrary to government guidelines there was no publicity for the meeting,
no distribution of documents to the public. I had asked to be kept fully
informed, but received nothing, not even an agenda or advance notice of the
meeting. A reminder was sent to Rushmoor chief executive Andrew Lloyd the
week before the meeting, still nothing received. FARA was asked to leaflet
the area, they refused. The weekend before the meeting I rang round groups
and individuals, and forwarded an alert from BVEJ, which did help the
turnout.
http://bvej.o-f.com/uact0015.htm http://bvej.freewebsites.com/uact0015.htm The same was true of the previous meeting, the inaugural meeting. I only
had verbal confirmation of the meeting the afternoon before. I rang round a
few people, luckily they too passed on the word and we had a fairly good
turnout.
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2003/02/53160.html I produced a new constitution and structure and asked that it be
circulated. Copies were passed to TAG, Rushmoor chief executive Andrew
Lloyd, and a few councillors and committee members. Andrew Lloyd was sent a
reminder the week before the meeting. My thoughts were not circulated. FARA
were asked to raise the matter and circulate the constitution, they
refused.
Before the meeting, Fleet councillor Peter Hucheson (not on the committee)
huffed and puffed that Fleet was under represented, and wanted to increase
the number of Fleet councillors. True, but misses the point. The imbalance
between Fleet councillors (who have one seat) and Rushmoor councillors (who
have three seats) is to reduce the number of Rushmoor councillors to one
seat. The more serious imbalance is that there are too many council seats,
well over a third, and that of the third that should be allocated to the
local community (seven seats out of 21) only two seats have gone to groups
remotely representing the local community (others have gone to local
chamber of commerce, Farnborough College of Technology and local Parish
Councils, one of which is not even affected by the airport).
Note: The committee should be roughly balanced - one third airport operator
and users, one third local councils, one third local community.
Much of what should be discussed by the committee, had been going on behind
the scenes, behind the backs of many of the committee members. Examples
include: imposition of 'independent' committee chairman, removal of Pat
Devereux (Hampshire councillor who made a bad job of chairing last
meeting), increasing the number of councillors on the committee (the excuse
for excluding many community groups had been it would make the committee
too big), etc.
What was clearly a stitch-up between Rushmoor and TAG, Robin Mackay was
imposed as an 'independent' chairman. Fleet councillor Norma Lambert raised
that this had not been discussed, let alone agreed at the last committee
meeting. He could could have added, neither had the criteria or procedure
for selection.
Robin Mackay gave a brief resume of his background and qualifications for
the job. He neglected to mention that he was an adviser on planning matters
to Fairoaks Airport, and formerly manager of Fairoaks Airport!
Objections from Norman Lambert were ignored, not a peep of an objection
from FARA, and Mackay was appointed as chairman for three meetings. Would
the committee have appointed Mackay had they been aware of his background?
Note: As manager of Fairoaks, Mackay was instrumental in blocking any
community seats on their consultation committee. The situation eventually
had to be resolved through High Court action. The judge was scathing in his
attack on the behaviour of Fairoaks. [for a transcript of the case please
see Richard Buxton's website or obtain a briefing pack from AEF]
The main discussion then resolved around the constitution, the cause of
greatest concern was the occupancy of three seats by Rushmoor. Norman
Lambert bitterly contested this, but got no backing, not a murmur from
FARA. Eventually Norman Lambert left the meeting in disgust.
The holding of the secretariat by TAG was raised, but left with TAG holding
the secretariat, an entirely unsatisfactory situation.
The rest of the meeting was technical issues raised by FARA on noise,
safety etc.
TAG claimed their projections for 2015, to draw a PSZ, would be 28,000, ie
their planning limit. TAG claimed they did not know the capacity of the
airport, assuming no planning constraints.
There has been some minor improvements. The chairman allowed a few token
questions from the public, Waverley now have a seat, as do Fleet and Church
Crookham Civic Society. But there is a long way to go, there has to be
better publicity for the meetings, greater involvement of the public, the
secretariat removed from TAG and handed to an independent third party, but
above all the question of membership has to be resolved, Rushmoor must be
reduced to one seat and groups currently excluded, eg FoE and CPRE, offered
seats.
The biggest disappointment has to be FARA (Farnborough Airport Residents
Association). Whilst they are very goood at raising technical isses at the
meetings, they are missing the bigger political picture. Nominally they
exist to represent the local community, In this they have clearly failed.
To represent the local community there has to be dialogue between FARA and
the local community, there is no dialogue. FARA do not even trouble
themselves to inform the local community of what is going on, even local
activists are kept in the dark. They were asked to leaflet the locality
prior to the meeting, they refused. They were asked to raise the absence of
CPRE, FoE and other groups on the committee, they refused. They were asked
to distribute the constitution and structure I had drawn up (one that would
be fairer and more representative of the local community), they refused,
they even refused to raise the matter before the committee. FARA have a
website, no mention of the meeting.
It is easy to why TAG or Rushmoor are keen not to allow FoE a seat on the
committee as they were instrumental in generating over a thousand letters
of objection to a business airport at Farnborough, but why FARA? Are they
afraid that if other groups who have every right to a seat take up their
rightful seats they will highlight the fact that FARA is not acting in the
best interests of the local residents who they allegedly represent? The
underlying philosophy of FARA seems to be: don't rock the boat, go with the
flow.
The local community is suffering hell from an unwanted, expanding airport
on their doorstep - noise, traffic generation, deteriorating air quality,
risk of a crash. They still have no effective voice on the committee.
http://www.heureka.clara.net/surrey-hants/ http://www.richardbuxton.co.uk/ http://www.aef.org.uk/ http://www.bvfoe.freeserve.co.uk/ http://bvej.o-f.com/ http://bvej.freewebsites.com/ http://www.farnborough-airport.org.uk 
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