Representation by Rod Mearing
- Date submitted
- 13 September 2023
- Submitted by
- Members of the public/businesses
I cannot support the suggested expansion of Gatwick. While the expansion will undoubtedly provide jobs, the benefits of this are likely to be short lived as every company seems to be looking for ways of using even more automation and cutting the number of people employed. The job provision will increase in the short term and then drop. The regular use of the current 'emergency' runway will require significant road expansion in the nearby area and is likely to remove some of the current wildlife area that is so sorely needed. The benefits to the nearby areas are questionable, the downsides are more traffic, more noise, more overflights and more general congestion of the area. The overriding driver is obviously a desire to increase profits at Gatwick, but while there is nothing wrong with companies making profits, we have much greater concerns facing us at the moment. Allowing an increase in flights makes no sense given all the current bad news re climate change. Anything that increases carbon output should not be entertained for at least the next decade while we work out whether the problems are less than expected, or possibly worse. It's no good talking about carbon credits as these are increasingly seen to be discredited. We also need to recognise that the great 'god' of tourism is also starting to face challenges - Venice wants fewer tourists, Amsterdam is actively discouraging visitors and others are likely to follow. The heat in Spain, Portugal and the surrounding area is possibly going to be untenable for the usual summer tourism and this will all lead to less demand, or perhaps to demand spread across the year. All these matters strongly suggest that allowing Gatwick to expand right now is counter intuitive. We may not be facing the huge problems that many are predicting...but we may be. And adding to the potential problems is not the direction we should be taking. (An important extra point - the information about increased overflights and new take off/landing routes has been sketchy at best although it may be buried in the new documentation that is available. At the moment, the details provided to those of us living nearby are not transparent and this must be rectified.)