• Campaign to tackle
    alcohol-related crime
• Campaign against Rye
    Steet development
• Second runway to go to
    to public inquiry
• NATS protests spark
    a rethink
• Future of Stansted
    up in the air
• End of the runway
• Council leader speaks on
    flight path changes
• Stansted second runway -
    "a top priority"
• 10 weeks to have say
    on schools move
• Prisk: "Public needs
    extra time to debate
    schools move"
• Stansted deadline
    extended
• We can stop
    schools move
• Government must rethink
    aviation policy
• Lib Dem petition against
    schools' move
• NATS extends
    consultation period
• Head teacher's school
    move fears
• Stansted panel grounds
    flight path changes
• Horse racing faces
    battle in the sky
• Residents fight schools
   land sell-off
• Prisk backs Green
    Belt schools
• The Times - Bishop's
    Stortford feature
• BAA announces second
    runway plans
• Rethink over more
    car park chaos
• Delay over
    runway decision
• Flight path shake up

Peer and leader of Essex County Council Lord Hanningfield spoke out against a second runway at Stansted on the day protesters marched on London to demonstrate against flight path changes.

The campaigners, co-ordinated by AirportWatch, rallied at South Bank to mark marking the end of four months’ consultation last Thursday (June 19) to change take-off and departure routes in the skies over East Herts and Uttlesford.

Many residents are worried about the proposals and their concerns were echoed by the county council when it submitted its own response to the plans.

However, Lord Hanningfield, who is also a prominent member of the CO2 alliance of authorities, united against Stansted expansion, warned: “These proposals don’t include the near tripling of air traffic which Essex is going to be expected to receive beyond 2016 when the government and BAA are proposing a second runway is built at Stansted Airport.

"Essex County Council and the CO2 group are totally opposed to this second runway and I hope that today's submissions to the NATS consultation and demonstration in London will not disguise the real agenda of imposing lasting and damaging consequences on the people of Essex and the East of England through the environmentally unsustainable expansion of Stansted Airport."

The NATS consultation relates to changing the way aircraft fly over parts of London, southern and eastern England, called the Terminal Control North area. The air space is some of the most congested in the world and Essex has complained to NATS that the information it provided did not "adequately demonstrate" the impact of the proposals.

The authority supported the introduction of continuous descent landings from the south west to Stansted and the relocation of the stacking "hold" at Sudbury currently used by aircraft bound for Uttlesford.

However, they objected to changes proposed for a Stansted departure route which would take planes over Saffron Walden. No changes will be implemented before March 2009.

Bishop's Stortford MP Mark Prisk is urging East Herts District Council to give residents more time to do their homework on the scheme to relocate the town's two single-sex schools.

Governors of Herts and Essex High and Bishop's Stortford High are expected imminently to lodge a planning application to move their schools to a shared Green Belt site off Whittington Way.

Mr Prisk told the Observer this week that the project involved such a range of complex issues that the usual three-week consultation period should be twice as long.

"The proposal for the relocation of the two schools in Bishop's Stortford will have important consequences for the whole town," he said. It touched on issues of housing and development policies, transportation, environmental impact and educational need. Equally, the proposal affected not just one site but potentially four locations.

On Tuesday he wrote to EHDC saying: "Given this, I believe it would be wholly inappropriate for the consultation to be the standard 21 days.

"Instead I would strongly urge the authority to significantly extend this period, preferably to double it to 42 days. Such an extension would allow all interested parties to have the time to consider the application and for all sides in the debate to put their case."

Mr Prisk, who has been criticised since he told the Observer that he supported the move in principle, added: “This is an important long-term issue for the whole town. We have a difficult decision to consider, balancing the need for more school places with understandable concerns about the impact on traffic and the local environment. It's vital that everyone has the chance to consider such a planning application and to then have their say."

A spokesman for EHDC said: "It's unlikely we would extend the period for consultation. Although we recognise the interest in the proposals, we have to treat all applications in the same way."

We can stop schools move

ORGANISERS of a public meeting hope to get 10,000 townsfolk to sign petitions opposing the move of two Bishop’s Stortford secondary schools  Map - School Sites  to Green Belt land  Map - Green Belt .

They also issued an appeal to residents to write to MP Mark Prisk, who was heavily criticised by some in the audience for supporting the relocation of the Bishop’s Stortford and Herts & Essex high schools to a site in Whittington Way.

The town’s Liberal Democrat politicians arranged Saturday’s meeting at Rhodes Arts Complex and party chairman Mike Wood was delighted with the turnout of nearly 300 people.

Speakers were Bishop’s Stortford Civic Federation president Michael Hurford, Twyford and Old Thorley Residents' Association vice-chairman Carol Hayward-Peel, former councillor Les Pinnell and Thorley parish councillor Janet Rolph.

Two petitions are being distributed: one to local education authority Herts County Council urging it to build a new secondary school on the Hadham Road site it has had earmarked for education use for 30 years, and the second to planning authority East Herts District Council calling on it not to give planning permission for the new schools or for the estimated 935 homes that could be built on their current sites.

Signatures are needed by the end of July in readiness for the planning application, which has yet to be submitted but which is likely to be discussed by EHDC’s development control committee in September.

Mr Hurford said the ripple effects of “rejigging the education system” would be felt throughout the town.

He spoke about how the two new schools would put 3,000 pupils and staff in one place, about the sites in Warwick Road, London Road, Beldams Lane and Hadham Road freed up for development, and the traffic implications.

He added that educational research showed large schools performed worse in terms of academic and social disorder, and claimed aircraft noise would breach building regulation levels. It was “stupendous madness” to build a school under a flight path, he said.

To cries of outrage, Mr Hurford stated that Herts County Council had provided £400,000 to developers working on the schools plans, which they could keep even if it did not go ahead.

The Hadham Road site was 8.3ha and a new six-form entry secondary school needed 5.61ha, he said, and the "woodland" which HCC said reduced the area was only "decayed orchard".

Mr Hurford summed up: "It’s a selfish proposal by the schools, and what's sad is the two schools have an extremely good scholastic record and I fear this proposal will wreck that."

In an emotional speech, Mrs Hayward-Peel, a teacher, asked where the surveys and analysis were to substantiate what the schools claimed. Developers were pushing it forward and the MP and governors had not done their homework, she said.

She challenged people not to leave it too late to stop what would be a disaster for Stortford. Her voice breaking, she added: "Mr Prisk, you said in the Observer that doing nothing is not an option. I say doing nothing to stop this is not an option".

• Why not build housing and school on the Areas of Special Restraint (between A120 bypass and Hadham Road) which is not Green Belt or under flight path?
• We need another community school. All others in town are foundation schools with their own admission criteria
• I work in a school in London with 12 forms of entry: the school is “unworkable”. “These two schools on a single site would not survive. The very nature of them would change.”
• Is there a need for more houses in the current economic climate? Stortford has gone from a very sleepy market town to a virtual slum in the centre.
• The proposals leave a wide area between Whittington Way and the buildings’ boundary on the map. “For a dual carriageway perhaps. Who knows?”
• Thorley Street is chaotic in the mornings now. It’s madness to think about putting a school in Whittington Way.
• These schools take 20 per cent from outside Stortford, from Essex. They are making the situation worse. A separate school would mean more choice for other people
• MP Mark Prisk is against eco-town at Elsenham yet welcomes this project
• Write to the MP: he has said he will take into account what people say
• Don’t rely on Herts Highways to sort out traffic problems