Representation by Matthew Hill
- Date submitted
- 20 September 2023
- Submitted by
- Members of the public/businesses
I oppose this project to create a new second runway on multiple grounds: 1. There is only one runway currently this is an attempt to get a new second runway via the back door 2. Doubling the number of planes coming to gatwick with have a catastrophic impact on air quality and on the environment. 3. Gatwick is currently not complying with the 6 decades old NPR flightpath, and will seek to move airspace to accommodate this huge volume of additional flights. This airspace non compliance and potential movement will cause overflight and noise blight to hundreds of thousands of people previously not impacted. This will impact people’s quality of life and their right to the quiet enjoyment of their homes which they purchased in the clear understanding that they were not in the flightpath. For six decades people have chosen where to invest in a property or where to build and develop in this area based on avoiding the Route 4 NPR flightpath, which was brilliantly designed to take planes (and their noise) out over less populated farmland. changing this and bringing relentless noise every 3 minutes to hundreds of thousands of homes will lead to mental health impact and to massively devalued properties. 4. Flight path changes are also likely to lead to overflight of areas of outstanding natural beauty which are currently peaceful, such as coldharbour and south holmwood, brockham, reigate and the north downs. 5. Gatwick is increasingly automating the customer journey through the airport resulting in far fewer jobs so their propaganda about bringing jobs to the areas lacks credibility. 6. The if the DoT decided to move a motorway, those houses newly impacted by noise blight would receive compensation, the same should apply here. if this heinous scheme goes ahead the billions of pounds that will be wiped off of house prices of hard working people should be compensated by GAL whose shareholders would be the only winners here. It shouldn’t be the government compensating, the taxpayer shouldn’t have to pay to mitigate the damage done in the cause of commercial gain. 7. GAL is intentionally misleading the public about the scale of the changes proposed and the environmental impact - their leaflet talks about this being zero carbon “from activities in their control”, they are excluding planes (!) and the gigantic impact of pollution and carbon that will result from this project. 8. There is pitifully low public awareness of these proposed changes. Gatwick has run sham drop in sessions and sent out one leaflet which is incredibly selective and intentionally misleading. Such a massive change should be fully publicised through local media and letters to all residents containing the full and balanced facts so that people are informed of the gigantic scale of what is being proposed. The vast majority of the community are currently unaware of the existence of the proposal and will be shocked and appalled by the scale of the change proposed. 9. Such major changes to the nations air capacity should be devised as part of a major national review considering alternative locations for airport expansion, and should prioritise locations away from such densely populated areas and such frequently used areas on outstanding natural beauty. 10. The infrastructure is not in place to support the doubling of the size of this airport. It would cause chaos on local roads during the massive multi-year infrastructure building work that would be required. For transparency I work in the travel industry. I do not see a capacity problem in aviation, quite the opposite this summer we saw a high level of flights getting cancelled due to under occupancy (ref easy jet). So there is headroom for growth in passenger numbers within the existing infrastructure, and there is headroom for further price growth which can deliver the airports financial growth as well as providing funds to invest in technology transition to reduce the carbon impact of airports.