East Midlands Airport

One of the main issues surrounding the activities at the airport is the noise impact from night time flights.

EMA is one of the largest freight operators in the UK.  It is the market leader for pure freight and has 30.6% of UK market.  It carried over 240,000 tonnes of cargo in 2003.  Most of the freight is undertaken at night time.  Whilst there is an economic benefit to this activity it can create disturbance to those who live along the flight paths.

The County Council together with Joint Working Group has undertaken two measures on the issue of noise.

The first was to undertake a background noise survey at a number of points along the existing and proposed air routes to ascertain what the current background noise levels were; to create a baseline data set.  The report on the background survey is available below.

Noise survey from Cole Jarman Associates can be viewed below

Further noise monitoring was undertaken by Cole Jarman Associates after the air space changes and a report produced on this post-alteration data with comments of the relationship of this data to the baseline data.  This second report is available below.

The second is to challenge the effectiveness of EMA’s Ten Point Plan.  EMA’s Ten Point Plan (which can be viewed by clicking the link below) has been prepared by the airport as a means to control noise from the airport.  We and the JWG believe that it is in need of improvement and have been negotiating with the airport over what the alternatives might be.  We commissioned a noise expert, Rupert Taylor, to come up with an alternative plan.  This alternative plan, known as the Taylor Noise Plan, has been discussed with the airport.  

A night noise metric has been designed in conjunction with the Airport to address some of the points raised in the Taylor Noise Plan and this is to be used by the airport to assist in monitoring night noise.  It is considered that this is a unique and pioneering methodology which is leading the way nationally.

The Taylor Noise Plan can be viewed here:

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