London City Airport Continues to Fail Local Residents

Or how the fat cats continue to use your tax money to avoid paying their own way and promote it as 'community work'.

London City Airport spend a lot of time on Public Relations.  They go into overdrive, but spectacularly continue to alienate the residents who suffer the most as they are rarely, if ever made contact with.

The airport is keen at putting out press releases on how many t shirts it has bought, or how many hampers it has given away, or the latest christmas card competition for schools in Newham and Tower Hamlets, or how they've sent someone to talk to schoolchildren about careers.  But the airport owes the community much, much more especially the residents. But it's the residents, and what they have to put up with, who are consistently ignored. 

The airport currently saves £7 million every year by refusing to contribute to it's security costs to the Metropolitan Police. It would perhaps be admirable if the airport would simply pay up, but as a consolation the airport could offer that money to the charities and schools it wishes to support, rather than expect London taxpayers to pay 100% of their security costs in the first place. This selfish, greedy action of London City Airport deprives the London public purse of huge amounts of money which would indeed be filtered back down into policing and education as it should be.

Instead the airport goes for the cheapest deal of all and donated around £36,000 to charities last year. Not to be sniffed at of course, but read on and you will see the bigger picture. Some of those thousands will be the donations given directly by residents and passed through the middleman of LCY from the Funday etc.  But for an airport that avoids paying £7m a year, it makes the donation look relatively small  in comparision and clearly the impact of not paying the £7m has a far greater impact on reducing services to you, the resident in your community.  Of course more public money from London tax payers was also poured into this private business owned by a bank and hedge funders GIP: the London Development Agency gave them a huge amount of grants to build additional aircraft stands and set up their LCY website! Can you believe it, they were actually given  taxpayers money to set up their website, how many small businesses would ever get that help?

The public relations are clearly welcome to those that are receiving the gifts and advice, however there is one huge flaw: London City Airport continue to fail to engage fully and openly with residents who suffer the most. Not only do they fail to engage, they have consistently failed to put any plan together to effectively improve residents quality of life as a result of the airports operations.  The draft noise action plan was a wonderful illustration of this - the airport felt at the time of drafting that nothing was bad, and there was no need for them to make any efforts to reduce or keep noise to the current levels - business as usual then! Those 1000s of individuals who make up East London, and who are the life and soul are invisible to London City Airport, they are the inconvenient truth, a reminder of the bad things that happen around airports, the pollution, the noise - all things that the airport prefers to ignore or deny.

Our argument is not that the airport are giving t shirts away or speaking to schoolchildren or donating money to charities, we think that is what any large corporate business who receives lots of public funding should indeed do: but  is about why they are not proactively looking for solutions to improve the environment and residents quality of lives in the areas affected. They are IGNORING residents suffering. 

It is a half baked PR strategy, a cynical one that completely ignores the ordinary resident of the streets, roads and closes that suffer intolerably from flights 7 days a week and if they have their way will simply get worse. It's always been the same at LCY, their communication with residents has been defensive, poor and of little help in providing accurate information. Residents have simply been left to pick up the pieces, year on year, and no better example was the one where residents were left to deal with the extra 20,000 flights the airport operated despite it being against the planning agreement. It translated into a noise nightmare that year and you know, they didn't care about residents, they, GIP were simply counting the dollars and pounds.

Ask yourself, what have LCY done to help you with noise and pollution from their operations? It's likely that a few of you have been told to keep your windows closed and have mechanical ventilation which is noisy,costly to run and leaves the room stifling, or they simply said they can't help you at all even though you live in the noise contour.

That, we are afraid, is the naked truth and no amount of PR trips to the local school are going to help the resident who has to put up with excessive noise and air pollution 7 days a week for almost every day of the year. Residents are simply left asking for help, and getting little or nothing in return whilst the MET are pretty much in the same boat with the airport, asking for their money but never getting it.

Perhaps it's time the airport put it's brave hat on,faced the residents and started looking at and working towards positive solutions to deal with the dirty noisy industry they want to make lots of money from at the expense of the local community. Residents have had no choice but to face up to reality, it's about time London City Airport did too.

Campaigners Remind Newham There's More to Life Than London City Airport's Shareholders

Credit Suisse Recommends Trains Rather Than Short Haul Flights

We always love a bit of good old hypocrisy and double standards falling from the mouths of big business, and you can always guarantee it is at its best when big bucks are in the vision of the fat cats.

In this example it is Credit Suisse - a major shareholder in London City Airport. They recommend in their own 'emagazine' that trains should be used in preference to short haul flights. We don't need to remind you that the vast majority of routes out of LCA are mostly accessible by train, and hooray...we see Credit Suisse encouraging the use of audio and video conferencing! Now they are 'forgotten concepts' for the 'fat cat plane and profit pushers'!

We suspect that Credit Suisse may suddenly have a change of heart about promoting train use and reducing CO2 emissions when applying it to their business interests at London City Airport.

Here's part of the article of their committment to encouraging the use of trains...over planes:

Air Travel: Second Largest Emission SourceBusiness air travel causes a fifth of the bank’s CO2 emissions. To neutralize these emissions, all plane tickets for flights originating in Switzerland and booked through the bank’s travel services are currently issued as carbon neutral tickets. Train travel is also recommended as an alternative to short-haul flights, and the use of audio and video-conferencing encouraged. In 2006, the use of videoconferencing for instance rose by 30 percent worldwide compared with a year earlier. Paper, waste and water use, combined contribute to an additional 3 percent of the bank’s CO2 emissions.

If you would like to ask Credit Suisse about their double standards and how they are quite happy to ask for 100,000 extra jets over the heads of the most densely populated residential areas in the country why not write to them? Here's their address:

Credit Suisse
One Cabot Square
London
E14 4QJ

Phone +44 20 7888 8888
Fax +44 20 7888 1600

Aircraft Noise and High Blood Pressure

In a report issued in January 2008 on behalf of the Federal Environment Agency, Berlin Germany it was found that:

'sufficient evidence for a positive relationship between aircraft noise and high blood pressure and the use of cardiovascular medication".

Wolfgang Babisch & Irene Van Kampf
Cardiovascular Effects of Aircraft Noise
2nd draft (December 2007) Issued January 2008

So if you have high blood pressure and live in the noise contour why not mention this to your GP or consultant? Perhaps in the future we'll be seeing some 'no win, no fee' activity taken out against London City Airport too. But then again, with the company they keep they will be denying it until the evidence is a mile high and hits them in the face.

Corporate responsibility Credit Suisse? Oh silly us! Of course it's residents own fault for living in the area, or that's the inference from the socially responsible London City Airport 'employee'! Considering the Government has a drive on housing people in the Thames Gateway, you'd think LCA would get a grip. Perhaps they ought to take that attitude along to the Government, and the Thames Gateway Unit? Yes, why not kick the residents in one of the most socially deprived boroughs in London, let alone the country, just a little more?

Yes your local airport certainly displays that it is a caring and sharing airport.....of all things negative with a hefty dollop of disrespect to the local residents. Corporate dis-respect.

London City Airports Annual Bill To London Taxpayers

We raised the issue a time ago, (something that London City Airport neglect to address in their spin to residents), of the £7million annual cost for LCA airport security, that you the London taxpayer, pay to save their shareholders money and make them more profit.

An agreement was supposed to have been settled by November of 2007 with regard to these costs: the Metropolitan Police quite rightly should not be picking up the cost and paying with our taxes - most of us would prefer to see that £7million put to good use by the Police in helping them to do their job in communities - not in commercial financial concerns. And it's clear that the Met want to see LCA pay their own bill - and we are right behind them on that.

So what's happened since with these discussions? Well not much it seems - LCA are dragging their heels - putting up a good fight so that their shareholders don't pay a penny towards the security costs.

In an article in Airport International at the end of last summer they highlighted how it is London taxpayers who are paying for London City Airport security and Richard Barnes of the MPA stated:

“There appears to be no common approach to the extent to which operators contribute to policing costs and too many different interpretations of requirements under current legislation. Police have to provide a service to protect all those who use our airports, and it is unfair to expect them to pay for policing private, moneymaking businesses.”

He concluded:“At the end of the day, it is the taxpayer who pays, while shareholders earn dividends. This can be tolerated no longer.”

Apparently it will ultimately land on the desk of Ruth Kelly if it is not resolved - and we just can't wait to see what decision she makes on whether we should all continue to go to work, or receive pensions and pay taxes on them just to fund the likes of LCA, Credit Suisse, GE and AIG.

And what was London City Airport saying about what they give to the community?!! We'll hazard a guess that it's not anywhere near £7million's worth each year!!

Credit Suisse Values At Odds with London City Airport's?? or Question 1. Why would someone object to LCA expansion when we give them free food?

Credit Suisse is a major share holder in London City Airport, we thought you might be interested in their corporate responsibility statement:

Credit Suisse Group knows that the assumption of its responsibilities vis-à-vis its various stakeholders, as well as society and the environment, is one of the keys to long-term business success.

Commitment to Sustainability
We strive to take account of environmental and social issues in our business activities. The signing of international environmental and sustainability charters underscores our commitment.

Society
We cultivate an open dialog with the public, support humanitarian, cultural and charitable organizations and provide sponsorship in the fields of sports and culture.






Pictured left - River Thames - Gallions Reach - an area rich in wildlife and at the end of the east bound LCA runway.


Environment
We have pledged to take account of environmental issues in our business activities and to continuously improve our environmental performance.

That all sounds good....We find it interesting that the good values that Credit Suisse are committed to (and we commend those) are pretty absent from London City Airport's management of the consultation and in the application itself. Concern for the environment, health, pollution - no....not too much evidence of that at all. LCA are hardly doing a good job of even trying to uphold the good values that it's shareholder prescribes to.

Fight the Flights has been wondering recently just how much Credit Suisse knows about the methods which LCA use in their quest to bury the bad news to the local communities not only in Newham but beyond. They might get a good idea of some of the issues just from this blog.

Of course LCA will try and tell you that their 1/2 kilometer consultation, limited to Newham only, is representative and was 'extensive'. Funny how they didn't bother telling residents who would be in the new PSZ map area...or in the new, all encompassing and enlargened noise contour map if the application is approved.

It's all been about as representative as the appalling questionnaire they put together as part of the application which contained 'leading' questions which do not allow any negative answers to be given, only positive - so sorry to those residents who thought they'd get to express anything other than what LCA wanted to hear that day you partook in the questionnaire. Any professional researcher would identify this as being 'biased' and therefore not good practice and invalid. Such questionnaires lead researchers to question the validity and the motive of such a design.

We just call it coercive spin that cheats communities of a real voice.

Egg sandwich anyone?