03 - Purpose and scope of the Noise Action Plan

Purpose and scope of the Noise Action Plan

Purpose

The EU Noise Directive (2002/49/EU) and Environmental Noise (Scotland) Regulations 2006 require airports with over 50,000 movements a year to produce a noise action plan every five years. Details of the legislation, contour maps and noise action plans for road operators, rail providers, relevant airport operators and large urban areas can be found at https://noise.environment.gov.scot/

People have different levels of sensitivity to noise and we recognise that noise from aircraft operations is a concern for the communities around the airport. We engage with local communities in a number of ways and this NAP is just one of them.

Scope

This NAP seeks to manage all noise on the airfield. This goes further than the EU Noise Directive (2002/49/EU) which just considers noise created by aircraft from the start of take-off and noise from aircraft turning off the runway after landing. We believe that the impact of noise should be considered more holistically and while noise from the landing and take-off cycle may affect specific communities more than others, we will also propose actions to mitigate impact of noise from aircraft taxiing or having their engine running on the airfield.

The scope of the action plan does not include noise from airport construction activities or noise from road and rail traffic associated with the airport. Construction works are temporary. Noise from major road and rail routes in the vicinity of Edinburgh Airport is covered by the Scottish Government NAPs.

One of the key outputs of the NAP is Lden noise contours for 2016 along with detail of the area, population and number of households within the contour banding.

The contour maps within this NAP were prepared by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). The 2016 contours are shown in Appendix B, C and D. Contour maps must be prepared using the previous year’s full-year data, and were submitted to the Scottish Government in March 2017.

In Section 6, we explain the difference between the commonly used contour metrics, with further technical descriptions available in the glossary