Back to list Gatwick Airport Northern Runway

Representation by Paul Orme-Smith

Date submitted
27 October 2023
Submitted by
Members of the public/businesses
  1. The Government decided in 2018 to proceed with the expansion of Heathrow to cater for the additional demand they foresaw in the South East of England. They did that in preference to having a second runway at Gatwick. That decision was to expand one of the airports or the other, NOT to expand both in similar measure. This proposal is therefore not in-line with the Government's premise, considerations and decisions taken regarding the expansion of air travel capacity in 2018 and should therefore be rejected. Also, by upgrading its emergency runway Gatwick is effectively proposing to expand in the same way as was rejected ie by bringing a second runway into daily operation. 2. Prior to the announcement that expansion would happen at Heathrow and not at Gatwick, both airport proposals contained significant mitigation and compensation measures funded by the companies to ensure the required infrastructure would be in place to support the expansion, minimise the environmental impact, and compensate those adversely affected by it. Gatwick's current proposal offers little to nothing in these areas, so the cost burden of dealing with the increased road and rail congestion falls on the county councils and us, their council tax payers, and/or central government and us as tax payers also. The likely reason being that the likely cost of upgrading the rail connections and improving the road network alone would be so substantial as to make their business plan unviable. However, without that investment it is likely that this very congested area between Heathrow/London and Gatwick will grind to a complete halt with air passengers driving through our villages because traffic on the M25/M23 motorways will be so bad. This will damage our already crumbling local roads and make living in this area a travel nightmare.