Noise group to fight airport expansion

THE Stop Stansted Expansion has set up a noise working group to try to prove that the Government has "grossly underestimated" how the region would be affected by airport and air traffic noise if proposals for more runways at Stansted go ahead.

The move follows concerns that Government forecasts for noise are lower than the effects experienced by a broad swath of the population across Hertfordshire, Essex and Suffolk.

The group wants to find out on what the Government based its calculations and locations of those who would be affected by Stansted's expansion.

The group studied Stansted's flight evaluation unit logs between April and September 2002, which detail the public's complaints about excessively noisy or offtrack flights.

The group said its checks showed "significant" numbers of complaints in a 1,800 square mile area with the airport at its heart, and a core concentration in the area between Chelmsford and Braintree in the east, Hertford in the west, and from Haverhill and Saffron Walden in the north down to Epping and Cheshunt in the south.

Complaints from outside the core area were received from East Bergholt, in relation to Dedham Vale, as well as Nayland and Roydon, then further out to the east coast across Constable Country, the group says.

13:59 Wednesday 12th February 2003

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