Dave Hill Blogs on the Politics of City Airport

Dave Hill of The Guardian went to meet Sir Robin Wales, Mayor of Newham today.

According to Dave, Sir Robin's office in Building 1000 has: 'a perfect view of the airport runway'. You can read more here on the 'Politics of City Airport'.

Building 1000 Is Sinking - A Bit Like Sir Robin Wales and The Hearts of Newham Residents

Yes, Building 1000 in the 'State of Newhamgrad' is sinking.

For the last month, our blog has been inundated with visitors looking for information on Building 1000. And we've just been waiting to find out why but what a good opportunity it has been to share the information of the property blight that London City Airport has bought to this part of London. And of course, how Newham went to the rescue of the beleagured, brand new building that remained empty for so long to perhaps save embarassment for himself and the airport?

It seems that it was yet another bad decision by Newham, a bit like the boroughs keystone cops that got Newham a call up to Whitehall one day, the situation was so dire.

This time, the curse of Newham and London City Airport has hit Building 1000, apart from it being a black hole for Newham taxpayers money, and for an alleged 600 jobs axed to purchase it....it now seems that Building 1000 is SINKING! In addition it's reported that there has been a lot of internal damage due to building faults see here in Newham Doublethinks informative and eye opening article.

Does this mean that London City Airport is also at threat of subsidence or sinking? Perhaps London City Airport may have been contributory to the subsidence due to excessive noise levels and the impact from Jets causing vibration and ground movement? Only time will tell.

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.