Review of existing Section 106 Agreement - Thanet District Council

6.3 General noise limitationsThe 1996 63dBA LAeq contour referred to in Para 2.1.1 was based onprevious aircraft movements by RAF jets. As no other noise contours wereavailable following transfer of the airport to civilian use, this was used as a‘worst case scenario’ in terms of limiting noise level exposure.As an alternative to the retrospective production of Noise Contours every twoyears, a future forecast contour for projected activity for some years ahead,2010 say, could be produced to assess in advance the likely scale of noisecontour and disturbance than could be expected.It is assumed the percentage increases in contour size referred to in Para 2.2on penalties are by measured area.6.4 Dwelling insulation schemeAs with the points made above in Section 2, the basis of the noise contourused is the concern. In the proposal the contour used will always beretrospective, whereas the creation of a set of future forecasts contours settingout the progression of the Insulation Scheme boundary over time wouldenable works to be implemented by the time the noise impact reached theaffected properties, rather than some time after.There is reference to an intention to “indicate….what level of noise retardationis to be achieved”. Noise insulation schemes have been carried at the majorLondon and regional airports for some 35 years. Any scheme of worksproposed for the KIA Noise Insulation Scheme should be comparable in scopeof works, scheme eligibility criteria and noise attenuation performance to thestandards set by these established schemes6.5 Preferred departure runwayThe use of a preferential takeoff direction away from major urban areas is tobe encouraged.It is noted that the airport has a target that runway 28 should be used for atleast 70% of all departures and for all night time passenger arrival flights,subject to aviation and safety reasons. These targets are, of course,dependent on the prevailing meteorological conditions (eg a maximum of a 5mph tail wind on the runway), although KIA’s long runway length does providean additional safety margin.There is no indication of any penalty that might be incurred if the proposedtarget is not achieved, taking into account circumstances outside the airport’scontrol. As a general point, it is felt that if a performance target is set there isa need for a matching penalty for non-compliance, otherwise the incentive ofthe target is lost. Should there be sound reasons why the current target forpreferential runway use cannot be achieved, then perhaps the target shouldbe revised to a more meaningful figure, but with penalties.EU00142:FINAL REPORT PAGE 27