Representation by Salfords and Sidlow Parish Council (Salfords and Sidlow Parish Council)
- Date submitted
- 28 October 2023
- Submitted by
- Parish councils
Salfords & Sidlow Parish Council OBJECT to Gatwick Airport’s application to enable dual runway operations at Gatwick Airport through altering the existing northern runway, lifting restrictions on the northern runway's use and delivering the upgrades or additional facilities and infrastructure required to increase the passenger throughput capacity of the airport. This includes substantial upgrade works to certain surface access routes which lead to the airport. The proposed works are predominantly located on the site of the existing Gatwick Airport and the sites of the existing surface access highways routes that lead to the airport. Gatwick Airport is in Crawley, West Sussex and some of the surface access infrastructure is in the county of Surrey. Salfords & Sidlow Parish Council would be predominantly affected by the increased harm to our residents from the greater number of passenger and flight numbers leading to both larger aircraft, which the dual runway operations would make possible, and concentration of noise on our Parish. This increased harm would be from both noise and air pollution. Gatwick aircraft affect residents of the civil parish of Salfords & Sidlow when using Route 4. Due to the prevailing winds about 2/3 of take offs are to the west with about half of these being on Route 4. For many years aircraft on the Route 4 SID flew well north of the NPR centre line and the 2013 Airspace Change Proposal made it clear that PRNAV routes would replicate the SIDs, the legacy route. This is not what was done. While we recognise this application does not deal with changes to the Routes we are understandably concerned that Route 4 will continue to fly south of the legacy route. Most of the centreline of the straight part of Route 4 NPR, after the turn, is over our parish and that route has brought aircraft over more of the residents of Sidlow is directly over the centre of the village of Salfords. Gatwick Airport should not benefit at the expense of increased harm to people on the ground. Any increase in flying to and from Gatwick Airport should keep to the principal that there should be no increase in the number of people affected, there should be no newly overflown people. Likewise, there should be no increase in the noise inflicted on people on the ground. With this as our principle, the Parish Council questions how there can be no new people overflown when many of the aircraft over our Parish are able to be vectored at 4000 ft plus so this is not in control of Gatwick or this DCO application. This in turn means that Councillors cannot understand how Gatwick Airport can state they will be remaining at guaranteed current noise levels when they don’t have any current legal requirements in place over the parish. This means that neither of these can be guaranteed - assurances may be given but cannot be relied on which is unacceptable. Gatwick established a Noise Management Board expressly recognising the need and indeed requirement for the current aircraft configuration to significant reduce the negative impact on those overflown and nearby. Gatwick has worked hard with airlines and relevant bodies for six years and has achieved very little in noise reduction. In a conversation recently they advised us that aircraft had become 30% less noisy over the last 30 years due to technological advances. Gatwick now asks to increase the noise levels over us with heavier bigger aircraft flying more often, a 40-50% increase in volumes, wiping out much of the benefits claimed to date. They allege that this is ok because Noise Management measures are being developed which will wipe out any incremental damage. This is not ok; those technological advances are to reduce the current level of impact further, for residents benefits, not to simply maintain noise at todays levels. We know the advances are not certain, require extensive complex negotiations and evaluation and that any material successful advances will take a generation to implement as Gatwick, Aircraft Manufacturers, and Government Bodies have aptly demonstrated to date. Gatwick’s failure to address the shortcomings of its Noise Management work, or the reasons it considered its creation essential is little short of negligent. We believe there a direct conflict with national planning policies in ignoring Heathrow 3rd runway; the economic impact assessment is woefully overstated as a result, further it uses assumptions which have been proved discredited in overstating income, job creation and understating environmental cost. It ignores the displacement of tourism revenue being delivered freely to other countries. The proposed additional passenger numbers have been double-counted from other airport applications in the South-East. Collectively they would require a significant north-south further shift on already heavily burdened Motorways and trunk roads, with overwhelming increase in traffic in the sky between Heathrow and Gatwick. Residents are already impacted by aircraft being depressed on Route 4, by holding patterns at Heathrow; increasingly blamed on weather and French air traffic control. Nothing proposed will do anything but compound this problem bringing a significant burden to all residents. The Parish will also be affected by a greater amount of Gatwick parking on our local streets and cul de sacs, which already takes place on many of our roads, especially around the train station as it is a few stops from Gatwick Salfords & Sidlow Parish Council OBJECT to Gatwick Airport’s application.