Northern Runway: CAGNE says London Gatwick ‘making a mockery of the planning process’ – and calls on Secretary of State for Transport to restart process

The umbrella aviation community and environment group for Sussex, Surrey and Kent, CAGNE, has led the legal challenge throughout the Gatwick Airport new runway planning application.

CAGNE’s legal team has issued a document to the Secretary of State warning that the new proposal by Gatwick undermines the planning process and it must be reconducted.

In the submission prior to the deadline for responses (June 9) on behalf of residents the legal team have written detailing the planning inspectorate’s (PINS) conclusion was to refuse the proposal put forward by the applicant (Gatwick Airport), but an alternative (second scheme) by the Secretary of State felt it necessary to seek further input from Gatwick.

Now the applicant has presented a third scheme with further untested or examined requirements.

A CAGNE spokesperson said: “Gatwick are simply making a mockery of the planning process and government.

“It’s about time the SoS [Secretary of State] demanded of Gatwick to pay for the infrastructure required and noise created by a new runway the same as Heathrow is required to do with a new runway.

“CAGNE, like local authorities, have spent considerable funds employing experts and legal teams to examine the application for a new runway overseen by appointed government planning officials.

“Yet Gatwick now seek to come up with differing schemes that have not been examined or tested especially concerning the two major environmental issues of noise and surface transport that are the applicants Achilles heel.”

The legal team wrote, “there has been very little scope for evaluation, analysis or testing by any IPs (or their appointed experts) and none by the Examining Authority, contrary to what would be expected had these changes occurred during the course of the Examination itself.’

"The PINS Guidance on Change Requests is clear to when change requested be accepted….. ‘the Examination Authority will consider if there is sufficient time remaining in the examination process to examine the changed applications.

“Whether sufficient time remains will depend on the complexity of the issues arising from the proposed change.

“For example, ‘the extent to which the change would generate new or different likely significant environmental effects.’

“The CAGNE legal team (funded by residents) now calls upon the SoS to start the process again, if not on the full application for a new runway, but indeed on the two key areas that Gatwick seeks to redesign without the formal planning process being adhered to, that of noise and surface transport.”

In response, London Gatwick said plans for the new runway were 100% privately financed, and included a commitment to provide an industry leading noise insulation scheme for residents which was ‘more generous than what is required by policy’.

And Gatwick reaffirmed that it was the Secretary of State who asked the airport for more information - ‘an entirely normal part of the planning process’.

The information provided by the airport had not changed Gatwick’s development proposal in any way, a spokesperson added.

A London Gatwick spokesperson said: “Today is the deadline for interested parties to comment on our 25 April response to the Secretary of State on the Northern Runway planning application. 

“We will review the comments when they are publicly available and look forward to receiving the Secretary of State’s final decision later this year.

“This is a £2.2bn investment, fully funded by our shareholders and it is essential that any planning conditions enable us to make full use of the Northern Runway.

“We are confident that our amended proposals will allow us to grow sustainably and meet passenger demand, while addressing the matters raised by the Secretary of State in her letter of 27 February, including noise and environmental impacts.”