Night time flying

 Thanet District Council meeting - Thursday 14th July 2011.

 

(MOTION - INTRODUCTION - LEGAL ADVICE - OUTRAGE)

 

1) THE MOTION:

 

The following written motion to council was submitted by Cllr Clive Hart and seconded by Cllr Alan Poole (Thanet Labour Leader & Deputy Leader at TDC).

 

'The Council adopts a policy of not allowing scheduled, pre-planned or otherwise timetabled flights between the hours of 23:00 and 07:00.  That a period of 1 hour at either end of the flying day be allowed for late/early arriving flights only.  That a penalty be applied to any flights arriving during the 1 hour periods.  No take-offs will be allowed between 23:00 and 07:00 hours and a schedule of exceptions to the above be prepared to include ‘mercy flights’, and flights for medical emergencies, coastguard movements etc'.

2) THE INTRODUCTION:

Introducing the motion at Thursday evenings meeting, Labour Leader of the Opposition Cllr Clive Hart said,

"Firstly, and I want to make this absolutely clear, we are not against the airport. We in the Labour Group most sincerely want to see a thriving airport creating good jobs for the people of Thanet.

However, we hear constantly of Thanet being termed as a ‘dumping ground’ in relation to social and economic issues and sadly, statistics show overwhelmingly that poor health standards here in Thanet are far worse than the average for the South East and even the whole country.

On a personal note, I have witnessed at first hand the effect that sleep deprivation can have on an individual. One of our wonderful grandsons has decided that for him, daytime starts anywhere between 3am and 5am and the cumulative effect of this over several months has had a devastating effect on his equally wonderful mother’s health and wellbeing.

Hopefully, that situation is a temporary one. The prospects for many Thanet residents if we are not clear as to what is and what is not reasonable could be permanent misery.

At this evening’s meeting we have heard what happens when there is a lack of ongoing monitoring in relation to grants and again in relation to a lease negotiated in good faith many years ago by this council.

The current section 106 agreement was put in place over a decade ago and has served Thanet very well indeed, but sadly the last two Conservative administrations at TDC have failed to review the agreement every three years as was originally planned, and it is clear from recent reports sponsored by the airport that they now see the 106 as an outdated agreement and will soon be pressing to extend their operations at night.

Chairman, America and Europe are currently experiencing very tough times due to the actions of a few bankers who saw loopholes in regulations and exploited them at all our cost.

We in Thanet suffer disproportionately from almost every social and economic ill. We do not need to add poorly regulated night time flying across our island as a further environmental problem.

The Labour Group therefore believes the council needs to give a clear steer as to what is and what is not environmentally acceptable here in Thanet. We support the airport but not at any environmental cost to the people of Thanet.

Chairman, I move the motion printed at item 8a in the agenda and option 2.2 to debate the motion".

 

3) THE LEAGAL ADVICE:

 

However, the TDC Legal Monitoring Officer advised the Chairman that the motion could not be allowed for complex legal reasons and pointed to a letter of advice from Bevan Brittan LLP (dated 14th July - the very day of the meeting) that had been left on councillors seats just minutes before the start of the meeting.

 

4) THE OUTRAGE

 

An intense debate on the extremely late legal advice followed in which Labour councillors explained that the motion had been handed in person by Cllr Hart to the Legal Monitoring Officer more than five weeks before the meeting on the 7th June and that the Monitoring Officer had read it and accepted it as a valid motion. A month later the motion had also been accepted onto and clearly printed in the council agenda as item 8a.

 

During the debate it also became clear that on the evening before Thursday's council meeting (13th July) Cllr Bayford, the Conservative Council Leader, had raised objections to the motion and that as a direct consequence further legal advice had been requested on the very day of the council meeting.

 

After the meeting Cllr Clive Hart said "TDC had my written motion to council for more than five weeks and the only thing I was aware of during the whole of that period was that it had been accepted onto and printed in the council agenda. The motion was submitted to support the councils own TDC Airport Working Party recommendations that had been 'left off' of the agenda of an Overview & Scrutiny Committee meeting in error and the actual wording of the motion simply confirmed the basis of the existing 106 agreement that the Conservative administration had failed to review for the past eight years".

 

Note:

 

The night flying motion to council was also directly in line with the 2011 Thanet Labour Manifesto that proved so successful with the public that it helped Thanet Labour to increase its number to twenty six councillors at TDC, just one short of the Conservatives.

With three Independent councillors, May's elections left TDC with no party in overall control.

Tesco/Arlington development Margate

RESPONSE TO DECISION

 

Margate Central Ward Councillors Iris Johnston and John Watkins have worked with the residents of Arlington House and nearby neighbours to try to get a sensible solution for the much neglected site.

Cllr Johnston said "Everyone has been in agreement, that due to Freshwaters years of neglect, the site is crying out for regeneration. Residents were very fair in their submissions and only wanted what was best. Traffic management, a right to a quiet night life and sufficient parking were high on their lists.

Mr Pickles, Secretary of State, has ignored our concerns and obviously given very little time to this application. We all want to work together for what is best for Margate and the Planning Committee really should have agreed to my request to bring the final decision to Full Council so that any outstanding issues could be addressed".

At the original Planning Committee Meeting an amendment tabled by Cllr Alan Poole to restrict deliveries to between 07:00 and 23:00 was ruled illegal by the Planning Officers. The reason given was the developers would not agree to it! The object of the amendment was to limit the potential noise nuisance to local residents.

Thanet Labour - Making serious matters clear

At the meeting of Thanet District Council on the 14th July Thanet Labour Group will put forward two motions to council in line with their 2011 Manifesto.  In doing so Labour councillors will make it absolutely clear what is acceptable and what is unacceptable here in Thanet with regards to two serious issues.

 

 

The first notice of motion is in relation to night time flying and has been proposed by Cllr Clive Hart and Cllr Alan Poole the Leader and Deputy Leader of the Labour Group at TDC. 

 

It reads: ‘The Council adopts a policy of not allowing scheduled, pre-planned or otherwise timetabled flights between the hours of 23:00 and 07:00.  That a period of 1 hour at either end of the flying day be allowed for late/early arriving flights only.  That a penalty be applied to any flights arriving during the 1 hour periods.  No take-offs will be allowed between 23:00 and 07:00 hours and a schedule of exceptions to the above be prepared to include ‘mercy flights’, and flights for medical emergencies, coastguard movements etc’.

Cllr Clive Hart said "night flights are a key issue covered in our Thanet Labour Manifesto for 2011 and the wording of our motion follows precisely the recommendations of the TDC Airport Working Party. The current section 106 agreement was put in place over a decade ago and has served Thanet well but the council has failed in it's commitment to update the agreement every three years and it is clear from recent reports sponsored by the airport that it may soon be pressing to extend its operations at night. The Labour Group therefore believes the council needs to give a clear steer as to what is and what is not environmentally acceptable here in Thanet. We support the airport but not at any environmental cost to the people of Thanet".  

The second notice of motion is in relation to live animal exports and was proposed by Cllr Michelle Fenner on 7th June.

Thanet District Council has just publicised the fact that it received legal advice on 23^rd June which “supports its views that there is no legal way to prevent the trade” but the unacceptability of the live trade remains unresolved.

There are still a number of conflicting legal documents from the UK law and various European Union regulations.

The fact that so far no UK court nor the European Court of Justice have justified the ban and that neither the UK Government nor the European Commission have legislated to prevent the trade does not stop TDC from taking part, as a stakeholder, in the EU review of its regulation on this issue to express its views and how it might be improved.

There will still be a motion on this issue from Cllr. Fenner at Full Council on 14^th July.

Cllr Michelle Fenner said "Since I submitted my motion on 7^th June I feel that TDC’s administration and Leadership have not been totally candid about the way they sought legal advice but I hope that in the interest of cross-party co-operation all elected members will support me at full council next week. I appeal to their sense of moral duty.”

East Kent opportunities and the EuroKent site

In recent years we in the Labour Group at TDC have had reason to voice concern over who exactly is deciding the direction of the district council. Our feelings, clearly outlined in our 2011 manifesto, are that all too often officers appear to be deciding the direction of TDC rather than councillors who have been democratically elected by local residents.

 

The East Kent Opportunities, Eurokent proposals are yet another point in question. Land clearly designated for employment use by councillors through robust council procedures is simultaneously being promoted by EKO (a joint TDC and KCC venture) to include a substantial housing development.

 

We simply cannot understand how council officers were ever directed to make proposals which go so blatantly against TDC's own established policies. At last weeks public 'consultations' EKO officers promoted plans that go totally against TDC Planning Policy and did so whilst at the same time clearly stating that EKO was 'answerable to councillors'.

 

None of our 26 member strong Labour Group of councillors have endorsed the EKO proposals and I cannot imagine that any of the 3 members of the Independent Group have been involved either. At best, some of the 27 members of the Conservative administration may have had some kind of involvement and in any event they are now clearly a minority of members at TDC.

 

In short, in a time of austerity and cut-backs, officers have been allowed to carry out a substantial and extremely costly amount of work on a project that may well not meet the requirements of the full council. Possibly worse still, employment opportunities for the site may well have been missed whilst officers have been clearly misdirected in their efforts.

 

Note: The Eurokent site is land between Westwood Cross & the Newington estate on either side of the new main road.

Who will pay for our crossing?

Dear Kent County Councillors,

Will you please use your dedicated funding to pay for our pelican crossing?

At the recent Joint Transportation Board meeting, a petition with 400 signatures from local residents of the Hereson Road, Ramsgate, was presented by Ward Councillors Alan Poole and Michelle Fenner requesting that the pedestrian crossing in the road be upgraded to a pelican crossing with traffic lights.

Using this crossing near the junction with Lillian Road has always been hazardous but it is now extremely precarious and dangerous. The opening of the new Tesco’s store has made the situation worse as customers park illegally on zigzag lines and on the crossing itself. The visibility for drivers and pedestrians is reduced. As a result there are numerous accounts of pedestrians nearly being run over whilst using the zebra crossing.

Cllr Fenner said: “We should not have to wait until a terrible accident happens for the crossing to be upgraded to a pelican crossing. The safety of pedestrians must be paramount.”

Cllr. Poole added: “We have asked the two Kent County Councillors, Bill Hayton and Bob Bayford, to use their Highway Allocation to fund the pelican crossing. According to the latest publication by the Thanet Joint Transportation Board they both have uncommitted KCC sums totaling £113.000 to be spent in their division, which should easily cover the cost of it. We are eagerly awaiting their response.”

The NHS - Safe in their hands?

By Dick Symonds

No-one thinks so – but why do the Tories hate the NHS and persistently want to change it?

It wasn't always like this. The NHS and the Welfare State was the overwhelming democratic choice in 1945, when the country was nearly bankrupt and in hock to the USA. Some of the older among us will remember the basically decent Tories of the '50s and '60s, who were quite happy with the NHS the way it was – the 'consensus on the welfare state', they called it. Times were different then. Society was more equal, wages were proportionally higher, unemployment was low and your job was secure, and that trend was continuing. This worried the super-rich, the controllers of the growing multinational corporations. The call came for a politics which would be more to their liking, which would end all regulation of the private sector, reduce the State to a minimum, control the unions, push down the wages and use the threat of unemployment to keep the working class in its place. Thus Margaret Thatcher, the present Tories and what is now called 'neo-liberalism'. Thatcher hated the NHS precisely because it proved the opposite: a superb public service, with a caring and not a commercial basis, for all the people and removed the need for money up front, administered by a strong and confident State. 

So, once secure, Thatcher started to change all that. First the commercialisation, providing more and more managers, making professional staff talk business mumbo-jumbo, setting up the silly game of pretending to be a real business, by having 'purchasers' and 'providers'. The powers of the Crown were removed, the efficient organisation of health authorities turned  into Trusts, run by failed businessmen and retired colonels, and our NHS property increasingly mortgaged to the future by loans from private finance. Given the chance, after the fall of the Tories, New Labour failed to make more than cosmetic changes (though put more money into the NHS, and did improve the service).

And so today, our unelected Coalition government wants to dispose of what we democratically constructed. It wants more of the business game, to give the private sector more power. This may start small, but it is in the nature of capitalism to grow like a cancer, and there is at present no effective barrier to international private health corporations gobbling up any local private health enterprises. The ultimate goal of the Tories, and some have stated as much, is to have a health 'system'  like the USA: where the poor can die in the street because they can't buy private health insurance, where the doctor is forbidden to prescribe treatments the insurers will not support, where 25% of the cost goes in administration. That's what private medicine means for the majority in the USA, whose biggest concern is that they will fall and for them it could mean destitution.  Meanwhile the super-rich, the directors of the private health corporations, cream off the profits.

Our NHS is big and powerful, as big as the old Red Army, the Indian Railways and many small countries. Given the right political lead (or rather the left political lead), it could compete with any capitalist enterprise, by using its purchasing power, for bulk buying any medicines for example. No private corporation has such dedicated and qualified staff. We could strip out the whole commercial and business structure , make it democratically accountable, get rid of commissioning  and consortia, and have a planning department and the delivery service.

So what is the problem that the Tories want to solve? They say our population is growing older and this is the problem. Well, it has been for centuries and it should be a blessing: our NHS has to be preventative and keep people healthier in old age. They say our cancer detection and treatment is poorer that some EU countries, but it varies from year to year. And these constitute the problem for which the NHS is to be risked?

ñ  We, the people, have to give a resounding 'NO' to this unelected government’s plan

         

ñ  The NHS is the Best of Britain: we'd be mad to let it go

Hands off our NHS!