THE scrapping of next year's Shepway air show at Folkestone will have little effect on the district's economy, according to the leader of the council. Cllr Rory Love said that the annual event brought £1.75 million into the district each year, but Shepway had a £121 million annual income from tourism.

He said: "The air show costs £130,000 to stage, which all goes on one day. People might actually start to question this now and there could be a public debate about it. This represents about 1 per cent of Shepway's income from tourism, so it is not the end of the world. "

However, he denied the decision to cancel the 2002 air show had been taken for economic reasons. He insisted the decision to halt the event was taken after the September 11 bombings in New York.

He said: "We are just taking a one year break. We could stage a second rate air show but we don't want to do this. Next year we have no guarantee that we would get the military aircraft that we usually have. There could be no tornadoes, no army aerobatic display team, no harrier and no Red Arrows.

"We wanted to cancel sooner rather than later. To have delayed the decision would have cost us more money and would have inconvenienced a lot of people."

Cllr Love said others who ran air shows might not have cancelled their events, but they were watching closely and taking note of what Shepway council was doing, before making their minds up.

Cllr Love said the council would look at running another air show in 2003. He said: "We all love the air show and we want it back. But we want people to be impressed and to come back to district again. We've always had a first class air show and we don't want to spoil this reputation."