Representation by Rachel Sellers
- Date submitted
- 26 October 2023
- Submitted by
- Members of the public/businesses
To whom it may concern I strongly oppose Gatwick Airport's proposed Northern Runway expansion and any further growth at Gatwick. I live in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. I have uninterrupted views of idyllic Kent countryside and I appreciate every minute of it. The nearest main road is 2.5 miles away. It took me two years to get planning permission and a year to build my dream home, in order to live in complete peace and tranquility. The dreamy silence stopped the night I moved in, during the summer of July 2014. The relentless noise from low-flying planes heading for Gatwick was nothing short of torture. I couldn't wait until the winds changed and I could sleep, at least for a few weeks. This brings me hurtling to 2018 when many a night I was on the verge of tears at the incessant noise causing severe sleep deprivation. I was kept wide awake counting planes as they passed directly overhead every 1 minute 37 seconds! And on and on and on it continued until the pandemic took the planes out of the skies and peace resumed. I am a voice artist who works from home, recording for clients all over the world. Increasingly these are live sessions with the client listening in. Despite building an acoustically treated, densely insulated recording studio with triple glazed windows, it has become insufficient when planes are flying over at such alarming regularity. Trying to do a day's work with little to no sleep is exhausting. My offer to you and any of your decision-making team is a visit to this slice of Kent. Until you experience the daily AND nightly assault, I can assure you, you would not be proposing such ill-considered, unreasonable plans. What reassurance can you give me that, as a result of your plans, planes will not continue to fly over my property or anyone else's, every 2 minutes, day in day out, night in night out? I have said from the start no ONE area should suffer! In light of our current mental health crisis, COP 26 and 27, noise pollution, air pollution and the climate crisis, the forthcoming planning MUST prioritise the human and environmental impact over and above financial gain! The airport has failed to demonstrate that there is a need for additional airport capacity that is consistent with government policy as set out in the Airports National Policy Statement. Employment and economic factors The employment benefits Gatwick claims the project would deliver are misleading. Its own consultant, Oxera, says that the project is not expected to result in material net job creation at the national level. Any local or regional job creation would be by displacement from other regions and therefore likely to be inconsistent with the government’s levelling up agenda. Gatwick’s assessment of the economic benefits and costs of the proposed project is based on unsupportable or out-of-date assumptions, together with omissions and errors. Correction of these assumptions, omissions, and errors would have a significant effect on the overall benefit-cost of the proposed scheme. It is likely that the scheme in fact has a negative net present value and therefore represents a highly unattractive proposition from a public interest perspective. Climate impacts The government’s climate change advisers have made clear that there is no case for additional airport capacity in the UK and that any net expansion would have unacceptable climate change impact. Expansion and growth at Gatwick would increase the airport’s CO2 emissions by nearly 50% from 2018. Emissions attributable to Gatwick alone would grow from less than 1% in 2019 to over 5.5% of total UK emissions by 2038. An increase in emissions of this (or any) scale would have a material impact on the UK’s ability to meet its carbon reduction targets and is therefore inconsistent with government policy. The airport has no credible plans to mitigate these emissions because viable low-carbon technologies do not currently exist for commercial aviation. Gatwick has also failed to assess or quantify the non-CO2 effects of its proposed growth and must do so based on the best available scientific evidence. It must also monetise and report its emissions using the latest government carbon value figures. Any growth at Gatwick should be conditional on it achieving a progressive, material reduction in the total climate impacts facilitated by the airport from a 2019 baseline. A reduction trajectory should be set, independently monitored, and enforced. Community and noise impacts Expansion at Gatwick would have devastating consequences for local communities and people under flight paths: there would be more noise, more road, and rail congestion, worse air quality, and properties under flight paths would be devalued. Gatwick’s analysis of the noise impacts of its proposed expansion is deliberately and cynically misleading. Its noise envelope proposals are inconsistent with CAA guidance and unacceptable. They propose inappropriate metrics and limits, do not comply with government policy, and lack adequate enforcement arrangements. They have also been put forward without the stakeholder discussion required by the CAA, in contrast to the approach taken by other airports. Conclusion The airport’s proposals in each of these respects and others are unacceptable. It would be wholly unacceptable to allow CO2 increases and other climate and community impacts on the scale proposed to facilitate an increase in leisure travel, predominantly for the benefit of frequent flyers. I reiterate there should be no expansion at Gatwick including establishing a Northern Runway. Among other things, it gives an erroneous and misleading impression of the need for the development, uses projections that are not consistent with the Airports National Policy Statement, contains material errors and omissions in its economic analysis (and so gives a misleading impression of the benefits and costs of the proposed development)and mischaracterises the noise impacts of the proposed development. At the same time, Gatwick’s CEO, Stewart Wingate, I understand has been appointed Co-Chair of a government committee, the Aviation Council, whose roles include to “support growth in airport capacity …”. Government is supposed to handle and decide planning applications through an entirely independent and evidence based process. Stewart Wingate’s position on the Aviation Council drives a 747 makes this untenable. It creates huge conflicts of interest for the government and makes a mockery of the planning process. He should resign or be dismissed from this position with immediate effect. For these and other reasons, I do not believe the plan to build Gatwick's Northern runway should go any further. Yours faithfully Rachel Sellers