Responding to the Government’s climate report and looking for solutions on noise

13th September, 2011

This is another one-month update, to allow for the end of summer, before returning to fortnightly bulletins. The big news for us has been the delayed publication of the Government’s response to the Committee on Climate Change report on aviation emissions. AEF provided early comment, which was used by campaigners and quoted by Flight International and GreenAir online. We have since coordinated a meeting with DfT officials and a number of environmental NGOs to discuss the report and accompanying CO2 and air passenger forecasts, where we outlined some of our initial concerns.

We have also, during the past few weeks, met with the new environmental noise team at Defra, where we discussed the changes that would need to be made to airport noise action plans in order to make a real difference to people on the ground, and pressed for clearer guidance to airports from government on acceptable noise limits. Noise from small ‘general aviation’ aircraft continues to be a concern for many of our members, and Nic gave a television interview for BBC Points West on the impact that persistent helicopter and aircraft noise in rural areas can have on nearby residents, following an incident where a tractor drove into a helicopter.

We are continuing to work on our response to the Government’s scoping document consultation (which now has an extended deadline to allow for consideration of the late response to the CCC).