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Aviation group call for backing on Hoo Peninsula plans
- Following the successful campaign against a government plan for a new airport at Cliffe on the Hoo Peninsula in 2002, a number of plans were floated for an airport including ideas for a £40bn for a floating airport on the Thames River which was abandoned as impractical.
This was followed in 2010 by the unveiling of a second set of plans for a cheaper and small option of a new £15bn airport at Cliffe. Then came a rather more ambitious £50bn Heathrow-replacement proposal for the Isle of Grain by leading architect Lord Norman Foster two weeks ago.
But despite all the ideas being branded “pie in the sky” by opponents, including Medway Council, the attention has fallen yet again on the marshy landscape of north Kent as the focus returns to the cheaper £15bn proposal.
An independent aviation advisory group led by ex-Cathay Pacific executive John Olsen and unveiled the plans in October 2010, but a review is now underway with Mr Olsen calling for Government support of the scheme.
The three-runway airport would handle up to 100 million passengers a year, easing pressure off Heathrow where expansion has been ruled out.
Mr Olsen has previously commented that although he agrees with London Mayor Boris Johnson that there needed to be another airport built, he did not agree it should be in the Thames Estuary, but instead located at Cliffe as part of the Thames Gateway regeneration.
He said the salt marshes were the “best piece of undeveloped land anywhere near any major city in Europe”. The plan is now being reviewed with hopes Government will support the proposal. But leader of Medway Council, Rodney Chambers, said capacity at other airports must be looked at instead.
“When this plan was put forward last year I stated that I was furious that this unwelcome proposal to concrete over the Hoo Peninsula and create an international airport appeared to be back on the table. That comment still stands,” he said. “In 2002, we successfully fought proposals to build an airport on green fields and internationally important wetlands in Medway and we will do so again. Proposals to build an airport in Medway that would cause massive environmental damage and be potentially dangerous to passengers and aircraft through the risk of bird strike.”
Protect Kent – the county branch of the Campaign to Protect Rural England – has always been against airport plans at Cliffe. A spokesman said any idea that north Kent or the River Thames could support an airport should be scrapped.
He added that even with bird control measures in place, flights to and from the site would be at high risk of bird strike.
