THE incessant chuntering of helicopters from Old Sarum is provoking a crescendo of complaint from people unlucky enough to live under their flight path.

Actually, why are they training Chinese search and rescue pilots up there?

Isn’t there enough sky in China?

Or are our instructors simply the best? Worth crossing half the world for? It would be nice to think so.

Be that as it may, with a contract in place, the nuisance is unlikely to cease any time soon.

And the airfield operators have made it clear that this could be just a taste of what we’re in for if they don’t get permission to build 462 (at the last count) houses.

So how do they, and we, put a price on peace?

Let’s look at the document they’ve recently released to our MP John Glen.

£48million is, according to Old Sarum’s owner Matthew Hudson, the cost to his family of surrendering their “unfettered rights to fly day and night, seven days a week” yet retaining and sustaining the airfield.

There is an alternative, which the document makes plain. Bring in noisier aircraft, and triple the number of flights.

Apparently they have the right to do that, and plenty of applicants eager to move in.

Talk about Project Fear! David Cameron would be proud of it!

Let’s look at some more figures.

We can now see that the sum they fished out from the back of the sofa to persuade their noisy neighbour, Equinox, to clear off was £3.3million.

They’re offering half a million to computerise the lights at the Castle Road roundabout to compensate for the extra traffic they’ll create.

Plus £200,000 or so to “enhance” Roman Road.

Lots of outgoings, then.

But if they build their houses, which they describe as a “very high risk” investment, they stand to make less than £40million. My heart bleeds.

The departure of Equinox – and of its pounding, vibrating machinery - will undoubtedly please its neighbours (though not those losing their jobs).

However, the newly-restored calm is likely to be shattered soon, one way or another.

Either by bulldozers, earth-movers and dumper trucks, and thereafter by hundreds more vehicles on the roads every day.

Or by the non-stop roar and whine of aircraft engines.

These are deeply unattractive options, based on the deeply questionable premise that anyone buying a World War One heritage site in a conservation area should be expecting to make tens of millions of pounds from it by one means or another.

Anyway, figures were asked for, and we’ve finally got some. I’m not sure they help. anneriddle36@gmail.com