June 2006 Archives

This Is Local London have a story about affordable housing in Wandsworth which has been sold to City workers instead of being saved for key workers like police officers, teachers and nurses. Martin Linton is mentioned in the article.

Battersea MP Martin Linton said he thought all 242 flats would be sold as affordable housing.

"I was disappointed to find out Threshold [the housing association in charge of selling the flats] had sold off 86 of the flats and I'm trying to get in touch with them to find out why they did this," he said.

Bizarrely the same story was also covered by the Qatar-based Gulf Times.

There is more detail about Martin Linton's views on this matter on his official web site.

Over on the official web site there's a story about the successful campaign to keep a night bus running to North Battersea. Martin Linton says:

I made the strongest case I could for the retention of a night bus for Nine Elms Lane and Battersea Park Road. There are hundreds of shift workers and over a thousand residents in the area. Passenger group London TravelWatch took up the cause as well. I’ve now heard that the N44 will be diverted but the 344 will run overnight instead, twice an hour, and that’s a really good result.

On Martin Linton's official web site there's a story about government plans to reduce night flights to and from Heathrow.

Martin Linton is quoted as saying:

This reduction will be a blessed relief to many people in Battersea who have their sleep disrupted by night flights. I should have preferred a sharper reduction in the noise limits, in fact I should have preferred a complete ban on night-flights. But at least the airlines have been told that they have to reduce night-flight noise.

The Government has also announced a ban on aircraft above 96 decibels, such as DC10s, taking off or landing before 6 am. This formalises a voluntary ban that the airlines were already operating at Heathrow.

The Government has also announced a change in the noise-bands which ensures that quieter aircraft, such as the Airbus A319, will be covered by the night-flight limits. A new noise band, known as Quota Count 0.25, will apply to aircraft which typically generate 84-87 decibels on arrival such as the A319.