The sun is shining and our reserve at Dungeness looks wonderful in mid May as the natural world gets on with the urgent business of spring.
But sadly I’m not down here to celebrate this glorious time of the year – but to receive news of the outcome of our High Court challenge into the result of a planning inquiry into proposals to extend Lydd airport’s runway and grow passenger numbers substantially.
And the disappointing news is that our challenge failed. Here’s Martin Harper setting out our initial reaction.
This blog has been running for five years and our opposition to the plans to expand Lydd airport have featured throughout – here’s the first post, back September 2009. Since then we’ve seen this crucially important place for nature host the UK’s first nesting purple herons. We’ve seen the arguments over the plans to expand the airport develop stage by stage, from the council meeting where we able to watch on webcast as councillors picked and mixed from environmental statements and approved the application to the public inquiry and now to the High Court.
At each stage, we’ve suffered a setback – but what has been equally clear is that our commitment to this special corner of Kent is undimmed and that is as true today as it ever was.
We have to digest the judgement and plan our next steps – the RSPB has been working for birds, wildlife and Dungeness for over 100 years and today will be a small note in a very long history. So, a big disappointment – but conservation is a long game and at this stage we are not ruling out any of our options.
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