RAF Northolt is lesser of many evils

WITH reference to David Gurtler’s letter of June 19 (MoD is breaking its promise) there were not just councillors at the meeting with the base’s commanding officer, but representatives of residents’ associations were there too.

Movements of commercial aircraft at RAF Northolt are to be raised from 7,000 flights to 12,000, phased in over three years to 2016.

The Ministry of Defence issued an order to the officers. They have to carry out that order whether they approve or disapprove.

Times change, and in the money conscious era we are now living in, everything has to pay its way. RAF Northolt is no exception.

How many sites have been sold in the last years in our area?

Number Four Maintenance Unit; Lyme Grove; Air Traffic Centre, West Drayton – and whoever expected RAF Uxbridge to be sold, all now mainly housing.

We need RAF Northolt to stay. The alternatives are housing or commercial flights, which would make all our lives horrendous.

The officers conducting the meeting were frank and informative.

The busiest times for flights at the base are mornings and part of evenings, and the officers will endeavour to put the extra flights in place during the quiet times if possible.

Commercial flights will continue to be restricted to quieter aircraft with capacity for no more than 30 people.

RAF Northolt will remain closed to commercial aircraft overnight, Saturday evenings and Sunday mornings.

An increase of 5,000 flight movements involves a maximum of 2,500 vehicles per year using West End Road.

May I respectfully point out that if you buy or rent a house or flat near an airport, you are bound to get noise of aircraft taking off and landing.

CONNIE EVANS

Oak Farm Residents’ Association

Windsor Avenue

Hillingdon

Charge quieter aircraft lower fees

IN LAST week’s letters, Mr Pearce questions my credentials when I criticised the increase in civilian flights at RAF Northolt (Don’t just moan – move house).

I have lived alongside the airfield and worked at Heathrow Airport for nearly 50 years. I was a cadet with 14 Squadron Air Training Corps at RAF Northolt and flew in the aircraft stationed there.

The Bristol Britannia turboprop was known as the Whispering Giant. There are no whispering giants now, or midgets, come to that.

The station commander has informed local residents that the increase in civilian flights, which the RAF charges for, is necessary, because the government has informed the base that it must be self-funding. This is the Arthur Daley school of economics.

I am not badly affected, but those who live under the flight path are taxpayers who fund the air force.

They deserve more respect and maybe a rebate, which no doubt Mr Pearce will graciously decline.

We are not against the airfield, but the civilian flights which are now quite numerous and increasingly switching to noisy pure jets. The RAF could encourage quieter aircraft, including piston and turboprop, by charging them lower fees and giving them priority for slots.

EDMUND O’BRIEN

Sussex Road

Uxbridge

No respite for vulnerable people

YOUR paper reported recently on the plight of the families at the former RAF base in Uxbridge who are being evicted from their homes, despite assurances that their leases would be for up to five years.

This past week, I have reports that three families have lost all their benefits as a consequence of being ‘sanctioned’ by the Department of Work and Pensions.

The reason for the loss of benefits was that ‘they have not been actively seeking work’.

How on earth can a very stressed parent with children, who is spending their waking hours seeking somewhere to live, prioritise ‘looking for work’?

Is there no end to the cruelty and brutality suffered by the most vulnerable people including children, in our community?

WALLY KENNEDY

Chairman

Hillingdon Against Cuts

Townsend Way

Northwood

Tunnelling throws up more problem

AT THE Ruislip Residents’ Association open meeting with HS2 Ltd in February, I specifically asked the question about construction traffic movements during tunnelling and how this would impact on the locality, particularly on roads like Long Lane, Ickenham Road and Harvil Road.

It seems that many other roads will now be affected.

I was told (a) that traffic surveys had been conducted and (b) that it was likely that most of the spoil could be taken away by train.

I asked what conclusions there were from the traffic survey – widen roads, build new ones? – but no helpful answer was forthcoming.

It seemed obvious to me at the time, and it is patently obvious to everyone now, that at least some of HS2 work has been at best ‘guesswork’ or ‘let’s go ahead and not count the economic downside to localities during construction’.

This new line will only benefit those rich enough to step on the train at Euston and get off in Manchester, and those who drew a collective sigh of relief when tunnelling was decided upon should now, along with others, join the battle once more.

It is clear that the proposals will damage the local economy, not only during the construction phase but also far into the future.

The named roads are already at capacity at critical times and will be gridlocked, potholed and dirty for many years. Compensation for this will not happen.

JOHN HAWLEY

Treasurer

Ruislip Residents’ Association

Please confirm tunnels not at risk

This is an edited copy of a letter to John Randall MP (Con, Uxbridge and South Ruislip)

COMMENTS made today (July 1) by the Department for Transport (DfT) Permanent Secretary Philip Rutnam have deeply concerned me.

At a session of the Public Accounts Committee, Mr Rutnam offered an explanation for increased HS2 costs as being ‘the demand for increased tunnelling along the route’. This remark has already been seized upon by scheme supporters as evidence that tunnelling should be scaled back to reduce costs.

Many people in your constituency have expressed concern about potential impacts of HS2, and have fought hard for appropriate mitigation.

This fight succeeded in obtaining the promises of, first, a tunnel under South Ruislip, and then an extension from South Ruislip under Northolt.

Any comments that endanger those tunnels – or unfairly affect the continued fight for further tunnelling under West Ruislip and Ickenham – ought to be strongly challenged.

It seems that all of the available evidence contradicts Mr Rutnam’s comments. When announcing the tunnel under Ruislip in 2012, it was reported to have been roughly cost-neutral. Evidence of this was produced by HS2 Ltd.

The extended tunnel from South Ruislip to Old Oak Common was also reported to be cost-neutral, with HS2 Ltd issuing a press release stating: “A study has recommended a tunnel as the best option for this specific section of the route because a surface route would have caused more disruption to traffic, cost as much or more than a tunnel, and would have taken longer to build.”

Other official documents indicate that tunnelling costs per kilometre of route have substantially reduced from HS2’s first estimates several years ago.

As my constituency MP, I would please like you to seek an explanation from Mr Rutnam as to what exactly he is referring to, what evidence he has to support his comment and also confirmation that, as HS2 Ltd battles the escalating costs, any proposed tunnels under West London are not at risk of being changed back to surface routes.

TERRY BRENNAN

Roundways

Ruislip Gardens

‘Reasonable’ is not an HS2 Ltd option

I AM sure that Alan Hilton is a reasonable man who has made reasonable assumptions about lorry movements for HS2 (Some revision of HGV figures, Letters, June 26).

The problem is that the promoters of HS2 are not reasonable people. The bill going through Parliament will give them unprecedented powers.

If a building is deemed to be in the way it can be acquired and demolished – remember the construction of Westway and the North Circular.

Tunnelling machines must run 24 hours a day to be economic and the spoil must be removed.

Twenty-four hour operation of the lorries through Ruislip and Ickenham is a must for them. Indeed, the reduced traffic during the night is exactly what they are counting on.

This additional traffic will divide Ickenham village into three sectors, and each sector contains a school.

With such high traffic levels, it will be difficult for motorists to go from one sector to another in peak hours. In fact, it will be almost impossible for motorists to get out of side roads, and impossible to turn right on a main road. Pedestrians will face additional hazards.

The horrendous traffic levels going past the school in Ladygate Lane will bring added dangers.

Looking for a reasonable reaction from HS2 Ltd is not an option. Three thousand lorry movements each day is the plan.

JOAN WATERS

Edinburgh Drive

Ickenham

Sincere thanks to phone Samaritan

I WISH to express my very grateful thanks to a lady who found my mobile phone and handed it in to the staff at Homebase in South Ruislip on June 24.

I am puzzled how I managed to drop it in the car park but, as all who have mobiles know, the loss would have been catastrophic.

Dear lady, whoever you are, my very, very sincere thanks.

ADRIAN BUCKLAND

Via email

Affordable homes are built too small

IN MY mind, affordable homes are decent, three-bedroom homes with front and back gardens where ordinary folk can live and raise children (We must demand affordable homes, Letters, June 19).

These kind of homes really are exorbitantly priced. The shortage, as I implied in a previous letter to this paper some months ago, is inflation.

There is too much money chasing too few houses, which could be cured at a stroke by building homes on the so-called green belt, utilising the army of immigrant labour in the same way that many thousands of immigrant Irish built many thousands of homes in England in the 1930s.

The Tube lines could be extended. Claustrophobia would be eased. The whole London unit would be more prosperous and efficient.

It would also help the situation if the listing of so many unnecessarily listed buildings was abolished.

I suspect the present system of listing is maintained to sustain the employment of heritage civil servants.

Yes, it will upset the influential Nimbys, but believe it or not they are a minority, and have a great interest in maintaining roses-round-the-door bungalows while being well away from desperate people in shared flats and tower blocks.

If our elected government is not forthcoming, we should build anyway. Politicians are all too often on their own side and not the electorate’s.

If more homes are built on green belt land, homes would almost certainly become more affordable.

The green belt is many thousands of acres of open land designated by the government in about 1948 and which belongs to the electorate. If ‘home’ building remains within the present boundaries they will probably be undersized flats and not decent-sized houses.

I wish Jolene well with the campaign website.

ROBIN KIRBY

The Fairway

Ruislip

Rubbish bags are reason for mess

I AGREE with Brian Goodchild who wrote to you complaining about rubbish collection (Rubbish strewn on street most weeks, Letters, June 26).

There is so much debris on the streets afterwards, and it is not helped by Hillingdon Council being one of the few boroughs which does not issue wheelie bins to households.

Rubbish being left in black bags does not work in urban environments. Foxes, dogs and other animals have a field day tearing the bags open to scavenge their contents.

The result is an unsightly and unhygienic mess on the streets each week.

EMMA MCKENDRICK

Ruislip

n Is it time for wheelie bins? Your views please. On the trail of your green waste – see page 36

The ‘bedroom tax’ is unfair penalty

COULD you please highlight the injustice of the so called bedroom tax for under-occupying council or social housing?

Those who have a spare room often need them for visiting family or other use, and even those who want to move to a smaller property cannot do so because there are not any properties available.

They are being penalised for having a spare room and yet the MPs get up to £23,000 per year for a second home.

How is that fair?

NAME AND ADDRESS SUPPLIED