Manston airport, last nights extraordinary council meeting webcast and a possible ramble about what it may all mean.

First here is the council’s webcast of the meeting    

I should point out here that this is the official council produced webcast  

Anyway I thought I had better put it up on the blog as soon as I saw it was available and will endeavour to add to this post and try to make some sense of what it all means and where we are with Manston if I get the time.  

First my own position on Manston, this can be summarised as being when the airport closed I was for efforts to get it reopened as a regional airport with a greater leaning towards the museums on the site. My hope was that the councils TDC and KCC could pursue this with heritage and regional economic funding.

I am and always have been against Manston becoming a freight hub that we can’t fly from, it has always appeared to me and no one has come up with any convincing argument against this, that for a freight hub to be economically viable the noise and air pollution would exceed the levels that the environment agency would allow.

For this reason I have always seen the freight hub as a ruse which has an alternate goal.  

My contention is that it only by there being some element of publicly funded investment in Manston that continued aviation use can be ensured. 

Although I think much of last night’s antics at the council were predetermined and staged for political reasons relating to the forthcoming elections, what underlies this and allows these antics is the secrecy under which the council operates.

My own feelings are that when companies whish to business with the council they should either sign an agreement allowing all of the documentation to be published on the council’s website as it is generated, or pay a fee to cover the expense of keeping it secret.

In simple terms the council have decided that they have no indemnity partner that fulfils the criteria for them to engage in a cpo.

To arrive at this the council used their own legal team and took advice from Guy Williams of Landmark Chambers, a leading barrister specialising in Planning, Environmental, Transport and Infrastructure, Compulsory Purchase and Rating Law.  

Now the walkout last night seems to centre on the council wishing to discuss whether the cabinet had made the right decision, when they decided that the only contender to be indemnity partner RiverOak didn’t fulfil the criteria.

The problem here is that the council officers made this decision and it was endorsed the cabinet who had all seen the secret documents showing why RiverOak were deemed unacceptable. However RiverOak are in the position where they can keep there documents secret, and the leader of the council has stated that RiverOak will not allow the documents to be made public so all the members of the council can see them and discuss them in an open council meeting.

Theoretically one option the council had was to hold yesterdays council meeting as a closed session, excluding the public and the press, theoretically this would have meant that all of the councillors there could have seen the secret documents.

In practice however, with the Manston issue the council has got itself into the position where it appears to be acting as I direct result of public opinion, this is quantified by the around 100 protestors who turn up to Manston related meetings and protest and around 3,000 UK residents who signed the online petition to keep Manston open http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/62738

As the prayer for this petition wasn’t for an airfreight hub, it is very difficult to say how many people in the whole of the UK support what RiverOak say they want to do.

It has been my contention for a considerable time now that if the council are going to act as a direct result of perceived public opinion then the first stage is for the council to hold some sort of public consultation.

I would say a major concern for the council at the moment would be if they hand out the confidential information that RiverOak want them to keep secret and that information leaks out then RiverOak may sue the council.     

There is a sense in which the support for any aviation activity, regardless of it’s nature, at Manston is becoming self defeating. Some activities of the various pro Manston groups would seem to have reached the point where they have become counter productive.

This is a quote from the leader of the council on one of the pro Manston FaceBook pages.

“Iris Johnston People who have been involved in SMA from the outset will know there were was a time when I had to convene a meeting so that all supporters of the airport really worked together for their common aim to get the airport reopened.

I also spoke to and met Mrs Gloag who was adamant she could not reopen and had already had conversations with RiverOak and rejected working with them.

My hope that the new owners even with the shared ownership with Mrs Gloag might revisit.

This was a possibility but the very serious attacks on their integrity has completely alienated them.

RiverOak did not get through the soft market testing and are very clear that they do not want TDC to allow their paperwork with us in the public domain. Commercial sensitivity was always going to be an issue.

The dossier they say they are sending to Government is a step in the right direction but as yet TDC have not had their formal release from our confidentiality agreement.

Sent from my iPad”  

I guess there is always the possibility that supporting a freight hub instead of a passenger airport may eventually be seen as a major reason why Manston wasn’t rejuvenated with some aviation aspect.

Whatever the situation this is much more about rejecting the indemnity partner than supporting the airport.

The basic questions are something like:

Do they have a good three year track record in business?

Have they made a concerted effort to buy the site from the current owners for a reasonable price?

Can the prove they have the money to see through the whole cpo?

Does their business plan produce an overriding public interest, above the existing owners business plan, to such an extent that government would override the current owners human rights and deprive them of their property?

Do their finances comply with UK money laundering legislation?

back to the video:

I think the first real breaking news in video of the council meeting comes at about 23.07 when Iris says the new owners have put in some planning applications. Or at least I guess that is what she means by “move forward with some planning applications”.  

As I have been saying since the TDC cpo was first mooted the council pursuing a cpo also being the planning authority for the site will present some difficulties when or if it comes to determining the compensation paid to the current owners. 

Anyway as far as I can see any decision now is in the hands of the UK government perhaps the results will be like this one http://www.crewechronicle.co.uk/news/local-news/battle-over-festival-site-5661427