London Gatwick £2.2bn growth plans: Airport chief 'confident' scheme will be accepted

The airport submitted an application, known as a Development Consent Order (DCO), on Thursday (July 6) to the Planning Inspectorate (PINS), outlining its ambition to bring the airport’s existing Northern Runway into routine use alongside its Main Runway.

By investing in its long-term future, London Gatwick says it will also enhance the crucial economic role it plays by creating around 14,000 new jobs and injecting £1 billion into the region’s economy every year. This growth would come from increased tourism, trade, supply-chain, and other business opportunities.

And although campaign groups such as CAGNE (Communities Against Gatwick Noise Emissions) and GACC (Gatwick Area Conservation Campaign) have vowed to continue to fight the plans because of the environmental impacts, London Gatwick believes the forward-looking and low impact plan aim to leverage the airport’s existing infrastructure to unlock new capacity and improve airport resilience, in line with government policy.

Mr Wingate said: “I have had teams working on this since 2017, we have publicly consulted in 2020 and 2021, they are professional teams and we are very confident that the plans we have put forward explain very well the economic benefits, about £1 billion GVA to the local economy, the creation of around 14,000 jobs because of this scheme, 3,000 of which will be at the airport.

“It also sets out what the environmental impacts are but more importantly what our mitigations are against those impacts. And because of all that we are confident we have done as good a job as we possibly could have done and the scheme should be accepted.”

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And in response to the campaign groups, Mr Wingate said: “Of course the campaign groups are an important voice ,so we have listened to them carefully. We are confident on air quality, that none of our proposals will breach any of the legal limits on air quality, we are confident we will be water neutral on our developments with the work we do at the airport to reduce usage and from a noise perspective, that’s why we have said in the future the airport will be no noisier than it was in 2019 because the aircraft will get quieter.”