London City Airport Loses YOU Thousands On Property

Not only do you have to pay extra taxes for London City Airports security, but you also pay for the airports noisy, and polluting operations...on the value of your property.

The Stop Stansted Expansion campaign group looked into this issue more closely and presented evidence at the last Stansted Public Inquiry in 2007. Ken McDonald, the author, found that aviation expansion was responsible for the loss of domestic property value of approximately £1 billion in and around the environs of Stansted Airport. You can read the whole paper here.

The paper showed that airport expansion when announced by SERAS in 2002 had a subsequent negative economic impact in the area surrounding Stansted airport compared with not only the rest of Essex but also neighbouring Herts and South Cambs. You can also view this information on the Stop Stansted Expansion website together with all the back up figures from the Land Registry statistics.

We haven't carried out anything like this for London City Airport, but the same principles apply to the areas affected by London City Airports' threatened expansion and have potentially already lost domestic property owners £1000s on the value of their homes adding up to millions in the areas affected. That's exclusive of the effect of falling property prices caused by the current recession.

However, to all those doubters out there (mostly the airport shareholders and their staff) there is also further evidence to support the findings in Ken's paper: Findaproperty published an article entitled 'Beware The Pungent Pong' 10 Jun 2003 as a news item. It stated that being near an airport or flightpath reduces the value of homes at a minimum of 15%. Cranfield University's Peter Brooker also produced a paper on 'Aircraft Noise Annoyance House Prices And Valuation 2006. He quoted that current government policy (DfT) states:

“…we will work to ensure that aviation meets its external costs, including its
environmental and health costs. The aviation industry has a responsibility to
reduce its impacts under the 'polluter pays' principle.”

Valuation of aircraft noise’s external costs is a vital component of environmental
impact assessment. If, say, Heathrow airport’s runways are operated differently, or if
new runways are built, then what are the corresponding environmental costs? What
are aviation’s ‘external costs’ for noise disturbance?

And yet strangely that valuation of aircraft noise's external costs are not addressed in environmental impact assessments at London City Airport at all in so much as the value of property being affected. When this issue was raised to the Newham Council Planning officer - a resident was told that property value was 'not a consideration of the planning process in relation to London City Airports expansion'. It seems that perhaps the Planning Officer had misunderstood the policy principle, or perhaps chose to.

So how much can homeowners in Newham and the neighbouring boroughs expect to lose on the value of their property, simply because of noise and air pollution? Not being able to open windows is not a selling point, neither is not being able to sit in your garden, like the man in Bexleyheath complained about. The noise of City Airport planes really worried him. As we all know 99% of the housing affected in the noise contour zone will not be entitled to any noise management assistance from the airport at all.

At a minimum it seems that you will lose 15% on the value of your property. Seeing that the area is the most densely occupied area of the country, the loss to property value could well exceed that in the environs of Stansted. The property is blighted and the area is blighted due to London City Airport wanting to continue to expand.

The airport isn't discussing this, and never will, as it could cost them money. The London Borough of Newham doesn't care about how much property owners lose, either in the quality of their lives or value of their homes - as long as they please Sir Rob and Richard Gooding. Newham are terribly impressed by big business, rather too easily impressed in our opinion.

What is most amusing about this evidence, and all the other evidence that has been carried out and supports that aviation does have a negative effect on home values is that London City Airport asked one of their consultants to carry out some research into this. Of course, they found that no value was lost at all on the value of properties.

You've got to laugh at how they managed to miss all this evidence! As we say, we are fighting against the lies, for the truth. Seems they still don't deal in the truth, particularly if it may cost them money in the community.

The 16 'Interests' of Councillor Chowdhury

The Evening Standard reported during the week that house prices in Newham have been the worst hit and have fallen by 18% . No hope of a sale than for the poor residents trapped by the Airport as a result of property blight for the foreseeable future.

But take pity on poor London City Airport Consultative Committee member Beckton Councillor Ayesha Chowdhury. With the average home price now at £257,963 her SIXTEEN properties in the ward are now estimated to be only worth a paltry £4.1 million. That's a drop, over a year of £750,000. As she does not have to declare any properties outside the borough we can only hope that she has other properties in less volatile areas. All's not lost though she has the yearly junket provided by London City Airport to look forward to in the summer..........whilst she busies herself with the concerns of local residents, unless those concerns are over aircraft noise and pollution that is! She couldn't possibly say anything objective about that at all in the State of London City Airport, whoops, State of Newham.

If she dared speak up against that deadly trio of 'friends': 'Sir' Rob Wales, R. Go, and 'The Nipper' then she'd soon fall out of favour with Newham State and have to deal with the 'consequences'....oh dear what a State indeed!

Building 1000 Costs Public Over Two Million A Year

It couldn't get worse for the residents of Newham under the chaotic, disorganised and autocratic leadership of Newham Council. Building 1000 is a subject we've covered before. It is an office block built alongside the Royal Docks by London City Airport. It remained empty for years - obviously the airport had created such huge property and environmental blight on the building that nobody wanted to experience the delights of working in the area, let alone live in the area. Building 1000 momentarily had some use in it's years of sitting empty: it once appeared in a Post Office advert (now that's like a kiss of death) - and in 'Spooks'. It was noted that on each occasion the takes did not include aircraft landing and taking off in the background. They'd have had to do a voice over if so as the excessive noise levels of jets in the area would have stopped all recording.

But don't worry - Newham appears to have come to the rescue of Building 1000, and was happy to sacrifice an alledged 600 council jobs for the pleasure. But it gets worse: Newham appear to have seen fit to moving some of their staff into the blighted building, and you'd expect it to be good value being that nobody else wanted to move into it because of the environmental conditions surrounding it, wouldn't you? Oh no, Newham doesn't do 'economical' when it comes to trying to save face and appears to want to hide and deny that the whole of the area around the airport for a good few miles or so, is so blighted that few want to live or work there - except those connected to the airport- all couple of hundred of them. Clearly Building 1000 laying empty was an embarassment to Newham and their claims that the airport regenerates, when in fact, ummm it appears to stifle and stop regeneration in many ways.

A freedom of information request has revealed the staggering running costs for Building 1000 from 1st April 2008 to 30th November:

• Rates £993,300
• Insurance £85,379
• Cleaning £2,227
• Management Fee £1,171,053 *
  
  *This is the cost of the building management and facilities management contract which
  includes security costs

But of course, don't forget, the airport apparently doesn't cause property blight at all, even though other airports such as Stansted and Heathrow do on homes and businesses that are not connected to the aviation industry. It seems that London City Airport costs Newham Residents more than meets the eye, you can now add property blight to the list of 'bills'. Add this to all the security costs at the airport which London taxpayers pay in whole, and which Newham doesn't think that London City Airport should pay, and you'd be forgiven for feeling that this airport is continuously propped up by the public purse. In more ways than one. It seems that the airport not only relies on the public purse to run, it also severely stifles job growth in east London... and a healthy environment.