The Administrative Court of Helsinki has asked for a rejoinder to the Regional Board’s statement of 21 August 2017 concerning the complaints against the Phased Regional Land Use Plan 4. Friends of Malmi Airport filed a complaint against the policies regarding Malmi Airport. The Regional Board has now made a statement commenting on the complaints, and the appellants are invited to file their rejoinders.
In its statement, the Regional Board admits that the plan report has been written erroneously. The Regional Board states among other things:
“Some parts of the text of the plan report should have been formulated better. Among other things, the text evaluating the possibilities of transferring aviation activities (“can be transferred to other hobby aviation airfields in Uusimaa, thus increasing aviation activity and other related traffic there”) should have been phrased differently. The evaluation text gives too optimistic an impression about the possibilities of transferring the activities, as probably only a part of the hobby aviation can relocate to existing airfields in Uusimaa and elsewhere in Southern Finland.”
In addition, the Uusimaa Regional Board states: “There is no official decision about allocating an airport to substitute Malmi. The Uusimaa Council has thus had no possibility to point out a substitutive airfield. The matter can be reopened in future regional plans if required by further preparation.”
In the decision document of its framework negotiations in 2014, the Finnish government stated that a prerequisite to closing down Malmi Airport is moving all aviation activities to a substitutive airfield. The related negotiations between officials on 3 May 2016 have been of cursory nature, and the National Board of Antiquities was not represented.
Friends of Malmi Airport will prepare a rejoinder to the Regional Board’s statement and deliver it to the Administrative Court by 28 September 2017.