A few more than the 114 first claimed then? Also most people don’t do Facebook so no doubt support is much higher than the membership figures would suggest. The whole point of joining the group is to register that they oppose what the council intends to do so it is irrelevant if they are passive supporters.
It begs the question why does the airport operator and Luton Rising Temperature put at risk the DCO application for 32m, which is meant to give a result in 2024 with an application for 19m, which they admit isn’t required until 2024 either?
I would suggest if the 19m application was turned down it would help kill the DCO and if it isn’t then opponents get a second chance to block a second terminal, which is probably why they oppose 19m.
The whole point of the 19m application by its partner, was a backdoor method by LRT to get around any DCO decision except it has backfired. The plan was to put in an application not for 21.5 or 22m, which is the now claimed limit of the existing airport footprint, but to add just a million passengers. By putting in several mini applications for small incremental increases, they intended to avoid government scrutiny except they were rumbled.
To the dismay of this “dodgy” Council, this Public Inquiry is now examining not only this application for an additional million passengers but the whole conflict of interest where the owner of the airport is also the planning authority. Also the fact that the Council ignored blatant breaches of its own planning permission over 3 years regarding breaches of noise limits, as they took a slice of the dirty money for noise violations. In fact they encouraged the practice with cash incentives.
This has resulted in the cash strapped Council, that claims it is broke, finding £600,000, that could have been spent on social services, hiring it’s own KC. This is on top of a KC hired by the airport operator. I would suggest that this KC is also being paid for by the Council as LRT has agreed to a 3 year financial package where the operator gets to keep an additional £45m that was meant to fund social services. Why?
Last edited by LTNman; 1st Oct 2022 at 10:17.