In July we made the formal submission of our proposals for Goodwin Airport to the Airports Commission, a copy of our submission can be downloaded by clicking on the image to the right.
Ours was one of over 50 submissions so the commission has plenty to consider. The quality of the submissions varies greatly, as one might expect, with some containing very little detail. There is also a fair bit of overlap with a number of proposals covering the same sites although ours is the only proposal for an airport on the Goodwin Sands.
We were particularly interested to read the submissions by the Mayor of London and TfL which include a technical note comparing options, that document can be found at this address.
In this technical note the Mayor and TfL use a number of criteria, which have been the subject of public consultation, to rate various airport proposals. Disappointingly they excluded Goodwin from this assessment process on the basis that it was too far from London. We think this exclusion is unjustified since the assessment criteria specifically include consideration of surface access to population centres – if the assessment criteria are valid (which we believe they are) then they should be relied on without arbitrary exclusions.
So what happens if Goodwin is added to the assessment? We have converted the Mayor/TfL assessment into an Excel spreadsheet, which can be downloaded from here, with Goodwin added onto the bottom. All the scores for the other options are as the Mayor/TfL scored them with the Goodwin scores derived from direct comparison with the other scheme scores. With the 1-5 scoring system this is not difficult to do. There are some anomalies in the Mayor/TfL scoring system such as the scoring of all schemes for ‘Airspace’ as 3 except for the Do Nothing option which is scored as 5. This has to be wrong since some schemes are obviously much better for airspace than others, with Goodwin being one of the better ones. Nonetheless we have scored Goodwin as a 3 for Airspace to maintain the comparison.
The result of the assessment is that Goodwin comes out 2nd (to the Isle of Grain) for the unweighted criteria. With the various weightings applied Goodwin comes out 1st in three scenarios and 2nd, 3rd and 4th in one scenario each. The lowest rated scenario where Goodwin comes 4th out of the 17 schemes considered is with double weighting for Surface Access.
The Mayor/TfL methodology is a coarse process but it has a value for determining which proposals are worth taking forward for more detailed assessment. The fact that Goodwin, when added to the assessment, scores so highly against rival schemes confirms our view that Goodwin Airport is one of the best options available.
