Divided opinions continue in Whittlesford and Heathfield on the noise generated by the F1 racing car testing.
It may be a demographic thing, in that I spoke to two people living in the same road on Sunday afternoon, one man with a young son aged about nine, who thought it was great and people should stop complaining, and a retired man who said it was just an endless whining noise, and needed stopping - adding that while everyone knows Duxford and its flying, but he didn't sign up to living next to a race track. I see the Cambridge News letters page echoes this division of opinion.
This contract is big for Duxford, but they need to manage the communciations and PR better, beyond the racing aficionados. The reason why the first test took everyone by surprise was because no warning of the date was given. Even the District Council environmental people were caught on the hop, because their understanding was that the whole thing was off. So when they got phone calls from people saying what is going on, they were a bit taken back.
One thing is that villages like Whittlesford and Thriplow and Heathfield have a lot of people who work from home, either full time or from time to time. I'm told someone was trying to mark exam papers last week and couldn't focus.
This is a district council issue, and the number for the environmental officers if anyone wants to call them to log a comment is :
08450 450 063
I talked to them yesterday: they explained that the issues they need to consider are around duration, frequency, location: the factors they need to take into account when considering whether statutory abatement is required - i.e applying the civil law of nuisance. They will be monitoring the next test day which is at the end of June. Again, some parents are saying it may disrupt GCSE revision ... one of my boys is doing his A levels and he is OK with the noise.
No comments:
Post a Comment