Health focus for charity donations by London Southend Airport Consultative Committee

£4000 funding has been awarded to local charities nominated by Airport Consultative Committee members.  This year’s focus is on health, with awards providing support and thanks to front line workers after a challenging year.

The airport works closely with all aircraft operators to avoid breaches of noise abatement controls. Where repeated breaches do occur, the airport may issue fines to the operator in accordance with guidelines agreed by the Airport Consultative Committee (ACC).

During the 2020-21 reporting period, London Southend Airport collected fines from just three airlines, resulting in community fund of £4000.

The ACC has chosen charities related to the NHS and the wider health sector to benefit from this funding.

This year’s charities;

• £1000 was donated to NHS Southend Ambulance station – Due to the COVID outbreak ambulance staff are going above and beyond for their patients. The funds will be allocated to provide a dedicated bench for well-deserved breaks.

• £2000 was donated to the Rochford Ward and the Intensive Care Ward at Southend Hospital where it will help to improve the hospital environment for patients, fund ground-breaking research, support the development and training of hospital staff and provide state-of-the-art equipment. Dedicated well-being hubs at each site allow a space to for staff to rest away from clinical areas, provide refreshments and offer one to one counselling sessions.

• £1000 was donated to the Carli Lansley Foundation, a charity which funds ECG screening days in the Southend area. Each screening day costs £5000 and will enable 100 young people (aged 14-35) to get their hearts checked. The donation will support further screening helping to identify potential problems and help provide peace of mind.

Glyn Jones, CEO London Southend Airport, “Whilst we would prefer to see 100% compliance with the Noise Preferential Route scheme, we can at least generate some benefit from the small number of infringements. Especially at the current time, with so much pressure on our health service providers, it is good to see the Airport Consultative Committee allocating the fund from the fines collected to these deserving local charities”.

Cllr Daniel Cowan, Councillor for St Laurence ward, “In addition to supporting three wonderful causes to recognise the amazing work of our NHS heroes throughout this incredibly difficult time, we wanted to think about those live-saving charities that have had their great work halted by COVID.  We chose the Carli Lansley Foundation for all they do in raising awareness of cardiac risk in the young and offering free heart screenings to young people.  We’re delighted to see the money from the airport’s fine scheme go to such fantastic causes”.

Les Sawyer, Airport Consultative Committee, “The annual purpose of the ACC subcommittee for charitable fund is to propose and help decide which charities should benefit from the ACC charity fund a task more difficult and emotive than one would initially imagine. However, this year the task was ironically made easier because of the unprecedented and horrendous year caused by the COVID 19 pandemic. It was agreed very quickly by the subcommittee that this year’s beneficiaries should be NHS related. This being a small thank you to those frontline individuals who faced overwhelming situations in their everyday work duties far more than normal. Sadly, some paid the ultimate price. The whole nation will be forever in their debt. Thanks to the generosity of London Southend Airports management, the ACC are able to make these donations”.