A few thoughts on Gatwick expansion

I cannot claim that the announcement this week came as much of a surprise. Quite apart from the announcement back in February that the Secretary of State was ‘minded’ to approve, debates around a new runway at Gatwick have been ongoing in one form or another throughout almost my entire 14 years as a local councillor, this particular proposal being so long in the works that I first met with Gatwick to discuss it over six years ago (there’s a reason the Government is working to speed up the planning process).

Over the years I’ve gradually come to the view that regardless of how many times a runway proposal is rejected or local views on the matter–which for what it is worth always seems to come out as 50-50 in favour and opposed–in the long-term a new runway would inevitably be approved at some point, so the focus for local representatives in the area should be on identifying the opportunities and challenges a new runway will create, working to take advantage of the opportunities and to mitigate the challenges.

Before going any further, we should be clear on this point, that this is a case of building a ‘new’ runway’ and not using two existing runways. The existing runways are too close together for both to be used safely at the same time, so the proposal talks about moving one of them, but a runway isn’t something you can pick up and move, so really what we are talking about is building a new runway.

This is significant for several reasons. Firstly, building a new runway requires an enormous amount of construction work, runways are some of the largest man-made structures and they need to be sufficiently strong to be able to take the weight of a plane landing on them, consequently the excavation and building work is going to create significant short-term disruption.

Secondly, if the proposal had stated that it was for a new runway rather than an existing runway, it would have most likely have been refused on current aviation policy. I wrote something fairly balanced on the planning questions around the proposal two years ago.

Gatwick runways and planning policy

It is worth noting that because the new runway will actually be further away from Crawley than the current runways, at the start of its working life we might actually benefit from a reduction in noise impact within the boundaries of the town (although, Horley and settlements to the East and West will clearly suffer worse as a result) and a reduction in night flights.

The decision to award Gatwick a new runway is being lauded in terms of its economic impact and I can understand that. The UK desperately needs economic growth in order to improve people’s wages and see more tax revenue generated to improve public services, and with Gatwick paying for the development it’s a chance to add billions to the UK economy and infrastructure at no direct cost to the taxpayer.

It is also true that the difficulty around securing planning permission for airports in the UK means that we are running very short on aviation capacity in the South East and work on Heathrow’s third runway realistically remains many years away from beginning, so the expansion of Gatwick provides the best opportunity for a nationally-significant increase in the UK aviation infrastructure in the near future.

Truth be told, given what is involved in building Heathrow’s third runway, relocating the M25, knocking down a decent chunk of Hounslow and with the flights being directed over the most densley populated part of the country, I’m increasingly sceptical that it will ever be realised. By comparison, with Gatwick being situated in a largely rural area, a third runway at Gatwick seems far easier to realise than one at Heathrow.

This may well be the way we are headed, because the council has been required for decades by the Department for Transport to safeguard the land between Gatwick and Manor Royal for a future runway. It is land the local authority sorely needs to deal with local pressures, but as far as I can see despite the new runway getting permission, that space is going to continue to be safeguarded for future aviation use.

So Gatwick expansion brings economic growth and with growth comes jobs, apparently 14,000 of them when other investment decisions by other businesses are taken into account. For the UK this is undoubtedly be a good thing, as it would be in most other communities. The challenge for Crawley is that whatever other challenges may exist for our area, a lack of employment doesn’t tend to be one of them.

We have at times had the greatest concentration of employment in the country outside London and while we lost this status during COVID, the town rebounded quickly enough that today it is again one of the largest jobs markets in the country, so much so that there are shortfalls in labour in some sectors. Consequently, if more jobs are coming to the area we are going to need more people to fill them, either by moving into the area or commuting-in daily to match local need.

Speaking of COVID. During the pandemic, Crawley’s economy was hit harder than any other economy in the country due to it being over-reliant upon one particularly hard-hit sector: aviation. Since that time, the council has been working with others to diversify local employment away from aviation, both to try and avoid any such vulnerability in the future, but also to address the problems with pay and career progression associated with many airport jobs.

More people moving into the area would be a big challenge for a town which already has a significant shortfall in the housing to meet local demand and where there are additional demand pressures from people moving out of London and Brighton to access cheaper housing. 14,000 workers and their families, is not something which can be absorbed into the existing housing plans for the sub-region.

The only thing which can realistically address this growth in housing demand and associated infrastructure is direct-intervention by Government to build a new town in the area, something I have already raised with ministers and the taskforce considering where to build the next generation of new towns.

Of course, people can commute to get to work, which is already the case for over two-thirds of the town’s workforce and that would help to reduce some of the growth in housing pressure, unfortunately it falls into the second major area of challenge: transport capacity.

While those living in the immediate area have the option of walking, cycling or taking the bus to get to Gatwick, for those further away realistically there are only two modal options: cars and trains.

Here we need to factor-in the almost doubling of passenger numbers alongside the growth in workforce. That is going to place a lot of additional pressure on the existing road infrastructure. While it is possible to see how dealing with pinch points could enable better access along the M23/A23, I suspect there isn’t much which can be done to improve capacity for the East/West links along largely country roads, so inevitably we are going to see more congestion.

Back in February, the DfT were saying that the majority of passenger travel to and from the airport would need to be by public transport and while that has now been reduced from a requirement to a target, achieving this target with current infrastructure is going to be extremely challenging.

Realistically, for passengers not living in the area the only public transport option is rail. However, the Brighton Main Line serving the airport is due to run out of capacity by 2030 even without airport expansion. To address this we need works at Windmill Junction–something I have been campaigning on for years, to remove the current pinch-point at East Croydon for all trains heading North/South between Crawley and London. These works were approved by the last Government and then quietly dropped, despite significant amounts already having been spent on the project.

The Croydon Area Remodelling Scheme is now essential to prevent the growth of Gatwick significantly hampering travel through the sub-region and if there is to be any chance of Gatwick hitting its public transport targets.

Obviously, there are also wider environmental questions about a general increase in aviation, and while I do not dismiss these, given that they relate to the future of the aviation sector as a whole rather than a single airport, they are better dealt with as part of a wider debate.

I know the Secretary of State has set out a number of mitigations to try to limit the impact of Gatwick’s expansion upon local communities, but the housing and transport challenges are hugely significant for the sub-region and not something sufficiently addressed by the mitigations set out in the decision.

No doubt the Secretary of State’s decision on the runway will be to the benefit of the country as a whole in terms of its economy and infrastructure, but given the revenue it will generate ministers need to agree to use some of that revenue to deal with the pressures that decision will will create for the local area by delivering the new town and Windmill Junction improvements the area now needs.