Representation by Pia Huxham
- Date submitted
- 17 October 2023
- Submitted by
- Members of the public/businesses
There is already too much noise pollution across our town and outlying areas from the Gatwick “approach corridor”. Planes constantly fly too low causing noise nuisance including at night times. If Gatwick is expanded this “corridor” must be eliminated and the whole of the south east and south west must jointly and equally share the air traffic, which is only fair if they are using it, then no single area other than the immediate airport area of Gatwick itself, is impacted in any way, but there are no proposals for this? It is still shocking that Gatwick deny this “approach corridor” to the airport even exists but of course it did not 10-15 years ago. Something has changed and it is simply the flight paths. Gatwick as a town appears to have no infrastructure to support 35000 additional jobs, where will these extra families/ people live how will they travel to work, can they afford rents or house prices. Are new apartments, houses, roads, schools, GP surgeries, hospitals, shopping etc planned to support what could be 35000 new families? Where are all these potential new employees coming from elsewhere in the country to an area which is already congested and with a higher cost of living. Travelling to Gatwick is already difficult due to road congestion or lack of public transport or the very high cost of transport. 35000 jobs equates to 2-5 entire new sizeable towns and they can’t all work remotely! Are advertised jobs at Gatwick currently being filled promptly by locals and how will this be impacted after expansion? If this expansion goes ahead, it must imply that all jobs at Gatwick are heavily oversubscribed and could currently be filled by hundreds and hundreds of suitably skilled or qualified applicants? Is this really the case that hundreds and hundreds of excellent and suitable candidates are being turned down for all Gatwick airport jobs? Gatwick is simply not London, it is very far away and is in any case dominated by EasyJet, I live near Gatwick but prefer to travel from Stansted, Luton or City and would only use other airports when absolutely necessary and not for short haul, if I can avoid so. The main reason is annoying airport parking and shuttle bus frequency, plus negotiating the already large airport and it is expensive. I prefer to go by train but would have to travel to London and then back out to Gatwick for this, which makes no sense, so although I live closest to Gatwick I avoid it but have still have to suffer the airplane traffic noise all day long.