Representation by Helen Gumbley
- Date submitted
- 18 October 2023
- Submitted by
- Members of the public/businesses
I object to the proposals on various grounds: 1. How can we justify any further airport expansion when we are trying to reach our legally binding 2050 Net Zero targets? 2. Gatwick is predominantly a bucket and spade holiday airport. This sort of air travel should not be growing if we are to minimise climate change. 3. If airport expansion is required and can be justified under climate change targets, surely it should not be in the SE with Heathrow expansion paused but still set to continue? What about levelling up in the country? 4. Increased employment does not benefit the local community as most jobs are low paid and have to be filled by people outside the area who are then commuting to the airport as housing nearby is too scarce and too expensive. This just increases traffic flowing into a congested area as public transport is inadequate. 4.The public transport links to Gatwick are not sufficient for current capacity or attractive enough to use. Most travellers drive, increasing congestion with cars seeking alternative routes through surrounding villages. Nearby areas suffer from holiday makers parking cars on local streets to avoid parking charges. There are no plans to address this and in any event any car park/road expansion would be too damaging to local communities, the environment and contrary to climate targets. 5. We already experience a lot of disruption from Gatwick with noise from flights which continue into the night with only a couple of hours respite before they start again in the early hours especially in summer months/holiday periods. Any increase in traffic will have a big impact as there are no periods of respite as there are for Heathrow. Flight paths are over quiet villages so overflights are very noticeable and sometimes the smell of aviation fuel is very noticeable too. Gatwick always claim local communities support the airport and expansion. In my opinion this is not true. Their consultation questions never expressly ask if you support expansion, just which expansion plan option you prefer. They have made it more difficult to track flights and changed software so it is now more difficult to complain - so in my opinion complaint figures perhaps do not reflect the actual disruption felt by the community. Expansion at Gatwick was only rejected a few years ago after very very detailed consideration. Nothing has changed since that refusal, in fact we now realise the climate change emergency is perhaps worse than previously thought. Consequently for all these reasons I think it would be wrong to allow expansion through the back door and the proposal to use the backup runway should be rejected.