Take your point Expressflight, but I have real trouble seeing where these 'new' 300,000 annual passengers are going to come from. The only possible way in my opinion is to take them from existing airports mainly Stansted, London City and possibly some from Norwich although the latter does not have many routes at present and City has practically all what you would call business routes.
Almost all airports in the UK are still suffering from the recesion and consequent drop in traffic andwill continually do so especially those in the leisure field, but as I have said before good luck to Southend but I will not be holding my breath!