| Topic: | Re:The "NO" campaign is failing! | |
| Posted by: | Tim Henderson | |
| Date/Time: | 22/11/12 09:01:00 |
| Nice shot - and what are those little ones doing there ? The Heathrow complaints system failing was one of the main points coming out of the Richmond meeting with resdents protesting that the system was not working and they were not being taken seriously. One perason who had moved from Richmond to New Malden because of the planes had found he was now affected and on phoning to complain about one early morning disturbance was told he must be mistaken in thinking it was a plane and it was probably a train. He said it had lights on in the sky and it wasn't running on rails. Ian Bruce of the Richmond Heathrow campaign said that there was a widespread lack of confidence in BAA's reporting and feared that the consequent analysis would be biassed. Heathrow admitted that complaints had been significantly higher and as well as increased amounts of the "wrong sort of wind" (the excuse reported from the Hammersmith meeting) they attributed the rise to them actively seeking feedback, to genuine increases in the numbers of flights arriving out of alternation "on the wrong runway" and to new measures of "early vectoring" where planes depart from their usual take-off paths and fly over places which have not previously had much noise. (Wraysbury and Windlesham seem to have been badly affected). They did "get very behind" in processing complaints and the number of days to respond had shot up from 12 to 25 days. The availability of slots across Afghanistan was given as one of the reasons why the intended plan to reduce arrivals in the half hour before 5 am could not be progressed as one of the trial measures. Issues with early morning night flights got heated and Heathrow said it was trying to introduce a new separate regime to balance noise predictably around the four possible approach paths. When queried by people asking how this differed from the existing timetabled plans, Heathrow said what they were now looking for was greater adherence to following the plans !! A Richmond coucillor announced that the Borough was going ahead with its plan to carry out a referendum of residents views on Heathrow expansion and it was inteneded to do this in the spring with papers sent in the letters about Council tax. Zac pledged to continue to fight on his constituents behalf and mentioned that he had had "robust discussions" with both David Cameron three days ago and with the party Chief Whip the previous day. |