Astonishment at airport approval

“I wonder what chance Manston Airport has?” asked Brian Cooper [Letters, Gazette, July 30]. Many people in Canterbury will hope that it does not have any chance at all of going ahead.

In the light of the evidence at the planning inquiry, it is astonishing that the Secretary of State has approved the proposal for a freight airport at Manston, despite the fact that the planning inspectors recommended refusal in the strongest possible terms. The grounds for refusal included the lack of any demonstrable need for the airport, its negative impact in terms of climate change, its adverse impact on heritage assets, the unacceptable levels of noise and the impact on the east Kent road network.

Do we in Canterbury really want to see heavy, polluting freight planes thundering over east Kent or yet more lorries clogging up our roads?

The Secretary of State’s decision to approve the proposal for the airport has already been challenged by an application for a judicial review. However, judicial reviews are costly. Anyone concerned about the issues this decision raises, and who would like to contribute to the costs of challenging the proposal for this airport, can do so by searching online for “support judicial review of Manston Airport”.

St Dunstan’s Terrace, Canterbury

■ Michael Steed’s support for a freight hub at Manston Airport [Letters, Gazette, July 30] is seriously misplaced. The Examining Authority (EXA) which consisted of four of the country’s most senior planning inspectors spent nine months considering this application and recommended refusal on almost every count.

The Inspectors’ formal recommendation to the Secretary of State was as follows: “For all of these reasons and in the light of its findings and conclusions on important and relevant matters set out in this report, the EXA, under the procedures set down in the PA2008, recommend that the Secretary of State should NOT grant development consent.”

I can only think that the Secretary of State must have been standing on his head when he reversed his Inspectors’ evidence-based recommendation on Manston.

As for Mussolini getting the trains to run on time, you have only got to look at how the Department for Transport famously messed up the introduction of the new railway timetables in 2018 to understand what we are dealing with here. Not to mention the infamous Seaborne Ferries operation which sank without trace leaving the Department of Transport looking very foolish.

Chairman, The Ramsgate Society