Representation by Dormansland Parish Council (Dormansland Parish Council)
- Date submitted
- 17 November 2023
- Submitted by
- Parish councils
Dormansland Parish Council Gatwick DCO Response Dormansland Parish Council represents a large rural area (27.16km2) of eastern Surrey. It contains largely agricultural, with a significant portion of the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in the southeast corner of the parish area. One of the largest employers in Tandridge, the specialist medical education establishment, Young Epilepsy is located here as well. The village of Dormansland is a small rural settlement and the whole population of the parish is less than 2,000 (2021 Census). Whilst nearby Lingfield is more directly located under flight paths of incoming aircraft, accessing the Instrument Landing System (ILS), until 2014, most arriving aircraft for Gatwick approached in a swathe to the north of the village. Since then, changes in the swathes for the approaches has meant the parish area, including the High Weald part, is more widely overflown by approaching aircraft and many are turning to line up with the ILS over our parish area. This adds to the burden of increased noise with planes banking and applying braking mechanisms to slow down (both flaps and undercarriage), increasing the exposure to increased aircraft noise. The steady increase in the number of flights, including the troublesome night flights, which Gatwick appears to have more than a fair share of, has made the “totality” of the noise of aircraft a significant environmental disturbance. Any significant increase in this number by allowing a new second runway, is going to make the position of the residents, in an open and very rural part of the countryside much worse. There are no large industries or major roads transecting the parish which would create increased ambient noise levels. It is a very open rural area. The noise is much worse for easterly departures as the planes are vectored quickly so many residents of the parish live or work under the noise of planes turning and ascending at full throttle, including the students at St Piers School & College (also known as Young Epilepsy), who have a range of learning, behavioural and/or physical disabilities. Their site was established at the end of the Nineteenth Century, to provide a peaceful and tranquil place for people with epilepsy and other conditions to flourish and thrive in the countryside away from London. It now is blighted by aircraft noise, which is only going to get worse if the numbers of flights continue to increase as proposed. The Parish Council also consider the increase in surface traffic which will result from increasing passenger numbers, and whilst it is going to have a severely detrimental impact on the wider community, it will affect our own residents, who will suffer delays to their travel to work and to the local secondary schools in East Grinstead. East Grinstead already suffers congestion whenever the M23 is backed up which adds to the huge volume of traffic, because of the huge housebuilding programme being delivered by West Sussex. The additional passengers will have to access the airport by car as the train line through Gatwick is already overstretched and can’t take any more carriages. The loss of open green land for car parking is unacceptable environmentally – especially as the loss of carbon capturing vegetation is to support the increase in CO2 emitting aircraft, which really is at odds with the Government’s intention to be net zero. Spreading the passenger load into the night is also unacceptable. Gatwick already is allowed to have more night movements than Heathrow and these are over open and quiet countryside; any increase in night flights or bumping up the “shoulder” periods will add to the noise pollution, not just for Dormansland but for all the surrounding areas. A larger Gatwick will need proportionately greater supplies, which can only be transported in by truck. The premise of the DCO is also to propose to increase the freight carried by the long-haul flights into and out of the country. Again, this can only be transported by road, there being no capacity for freight on the already full London-Brighton rail line. All this extra HGV traffic will increasingly damage the road surfaces and add to the misery of congestion. The surface traffic for the increased passenger numbers, support staff, freight and supplies will add to the air pollution that is generated by the aircraft, providing an unhealthy mix of Nitrous Dioxide and Fine Particulates, as well as all the additional CO2, at a time when we are trying to reduce our country’s carbon footprint. Staffing will be an issue. The surrounding areas does not have significant unemployment. Any workers on the lower pay scales won't be able to afford the local housing costs, and there is a significant shortage of "affordable" and social rented properties. Dormansland specifically, and Tandridge generally, has an acute shortage of affordable housing, with a council waiting list of nearly 2,000 families. These new workers will therefore need to be bussed in - which is already happening - baggage handlers and hospitality/retail staff are often on Zero Hours contracts and can't afford to live locally. Even a pilot for Easy Jet is earning less than £23,000 a year - too little to get a mortgage on properties locally. The average price of houses in Dormansland starts at £550,000 (from Zoopla 2023). Gatwick has already achieved a significant amount of growth over the last 15 years, through increasing the number of flights, new airlines using the airport and the mechanisation of many processes, to increase passenger through-put. Dormansland is already receiving increased noise and nighttime disturbance. Increasing the number of flights to up to 75 per hour is unacceptable. It should be noted that this growth has taken place through permitted development and without any mitigation provided for the local communities which are negatively impacted. The proposal to move the existing "northern" runway 12 metres to the north to allow safe departures all through the day, is not making best use of existing runways. It is the building of a completely new runway in a different location, with the consequence of having to relocate significant amounts of built form to other parts of their site, including the air traffic control tower and the fire station. It is going to build over vast swathes of open countryside for additional parking spaces, all of which adds harm to the local biodiversity and importantly adds additional run-off to the local drainage network. The area floods very frequently and along with the local water and power supply which is inadequate to support the existing airport capacity, there will be more power cuts and floods, including foul water and sewage. Government policy was also to have the additional runway capacity at Heathrow and there is nothing we have seen anywhere in the application materials, that provides any evidence that the so-called economic benefits will outweigh the huge harms to the residents under the flight paths, the people using and living near the congested roads, the local and wider environment and CO2 emissions for Britain. Dormansland Parish Council reserves the right to submit further comments to the DCO process and wishes to register as an interested party. Submitted by Cllr Lockwood on behalf of the Parish Clerk of Dormansland Parish Council (Redacted)