REPORT TO PICKMERE PARISH COUNCIL
7th September 2021
AGENDA ITEM 9.4 MANCHESTER AIRPORT FUTURE AIRSPACE PROJECT
1 REPORT
1.1 Manchester Airport have recently issued the following communication to town and parish
councils.
We have all shared the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. With international travel
severely restricted and passenger numbers down over 99% in the initial phase of the
lockdown, this has been a testing year for MAG Manchester Airport, our colleagues,
our communities, and the wider aviation industry. Like many other airports, in the UK,
the Future Airspace programme at Manchester Airport was effectively paused in 2020.
The Government has made it clear that the need for investment to upgrade and
modernise the network to address existing constraints, reduce delays for travellers and
reduce environmental impacts remains unchanged. We have now restarted the
Manchester Airport Future Airspace project and expect that we will deliver our next
phase of engagement later in 2021.
Reminder of how far we have come
The airspace process that we, and other airports are following, was introduced in 2017
(and was last amended in March 2021) and is set out in a document called CAP1616
that is published online. On page 18 of CAP1616 the seven-stage, 14 step, process is
defined as below.
Manchester Airport issued a ‘Statement of Need’ to the CAA, Step 1A of Stage 1
‘Define’, in March 2019; the CAA approved, and the change process was started. As
part of Step 1B, we produced an information pack on the ‘Design Principles’ and
promoted it widely through the community and industry. We also met with elected
representatives, held Focus Groups, and provided opportunities to discuss the process,
face-to-face, at outreach sessions in August, September, and October 2019. At all
sessions and meetings, we encouraged those who were interested to feedback through
an online survey on suggested Design Principles.
We evaluated the feedback from Focus Groups and insights from members of the public
to produce a set of draft Design Principles that were tested with a further set of Focus
Groups. We carefully considered the comments and feedback and produced a set of
nine proposed Design Principles. These were sent to the CAA in a report for evaluation.
The CAA reviewed our report and proposed Design Principles, and they gave their
approval for Manchester Airport to move to Stage 2 of the CAP1616 process. It was at
this point that the Manchester Airport Future Airspace programme was paused.
Our next steps
We have now started Stage 2 and appointed airspace designers to develop flight path
options. Stage 2, like Stage 1, is not a consultation, but we are keen to provide an
opportunity for the community and industry to input into the process and help us to
‘Develop and Assess’. Later in 2021 and again in early 2022 we plan to test the first
outputs from our airspace designers with the stakeholders we engaged with during
Step 1B of Stage 1. We will seek feedback to ensure that we have developed the
envelopes with the Design Principles in mind. We will do this by testing the
comprehension of the rationale for designs, and the design envelopes, with our
stakeholders.
We need assistance from you
We are at this stage of the airspace change process extending a request for specific
assistance from Local Planning Authorities. It is set out by the CAA / Government that
the primary environmental effect below 7,000ft (the airspace that is the responsibility
of the airspace change sponsor, Manchester Airport) is noise so in conducting our next
step of the process we need to not only understand where existing population centres
are, but we also need to appreciate where possible new centres of population might
be. We therefore need to be able to map all prospective sites of 50+ housing units. The
reason for this threshold is that is the metric CAA use (when mapping airport noise
contours and calculating populations affected by noise) is in units of 100 houses, but
‘rounding up’ -hence we need to identify all sites of greater than 50 units. We are
therefore looking for sites under development, with permission but not yet
commenced, allocated in development plans, or identified in Strategic Housing Land
Availability Assessments with a high likelihood of delivery. Any assistance in identifying
such sites will be most welcome and will ensure that Manchester Airport is able to test,
as rigorously as possible, the potential effects of any proposed options to change
aircraft routing.
You can keep up to date on the Manchester Airport Future Airspace programme
through the CAA portal or the page on our own website:
www.manchesterairport.co.uk/futureairspace.
1.2 MAG are looking to identify any potential housing sites of 50 or more dwellings, so that such
sites can be incorporated in their calculation of potential flight routes. However, there are no
such sites within this parish.
2. RECOMMENDATION
2.1 That Council notes this communication and comments as necessary.
Jack Steel
Clerk to the Parish Council
