Gatwick Airspace Modernisation Review

Debate between Peter Lamb and John Milne

Wednesday 18th December 2024 Westminster Hall

[John Milne]

I thank the right hon. Member for his intervention. I am aware that he has been fighting this cause for a very long time. I certainly agree with his comments and the need for a truly national process on this.

The problem is identified by the CAA as a

“scarce expertise in the industry…leading to inconsistent standards and variable quality”

in airport change process submissions. Unfortunately, the Gatwick review will be completed before this new body is even established. Could we be overestimating the negative impacts of this new route? Are residents exaggerating the damage it might do to their wellbeing? We can confidently say that it is no exaggeration, because the same route has already been experimented with before. Back in 2014 a trial was run called ADNID, following more or less the same line. The impact was immediately disastrous, causing a storm of complaints—so much so that the CEO at the time said that the trial route would never be used again. Yet here we are, 10 years later, and ADNID mark II has arrived.

Although Gatwick claims that these proposals would remove traffic from the existing pathway population swathe, not a single population centre would actually benefit from the change. For the first time, the options being presented to the public consultation bring in thousands of residents who were not previously overflown, contradicting GAL’s own policy of deconfliction. The forceful objections raised in 2014 are being ignored.

Gatwick’s route selection cannot be justified on environmental grounds either. Airspace modernisation is designed to reduce carbon emissions from air travel through more efficient flying. Although that may be achieved as a whole in the FASI-S project, the reduction in emissions is largely achieved by the changes made above 7,000 feet. The emissions and their impact under 7,000 feet are simply not being analysed and nor are the potential harms, which are not even mentioned in stage two of GAL’s FASI-S consultation.

The consultation process as a whole lacks transparency. There are many questions that I believe the public need answers to. No defined methodology for shortlisting flightpath options has been put forward for public consultation. Why is GAL allowed to pick and choose proposed flightpaths without independent review or scrutiny? As stated, the options show little or no variation. It is not three choices—

[Peter Lamb (Crawley) (Lab)]

I am well aware of many of the points the hon. Member is making. In fact, back in 2014 I was on Gatwick’s consultative forum as a community representative and I was well aware then of the impact that the trial route had, in terms of concentrated noise in some areas and the consequent storm of community feeling. However, I suppose that one of the key problems will ultimately be that if we are trying to rationalise airspace with a complex set of interconnecting airports, there will only be a finite number of routes that can reasonably be taken in order for that rationalisation to happen.

Beyond that point, my broader concern is that in enabling a far more efficient set of flightpaths, ultimately what we are doing is enabling far greater capacity in terms of flights in our region. As I am sure both the hon. Member and the hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Alison Bennett) will agree, north Sussex’s infrastructure is already completely overloaded from dealing with the existing levels of demand from the airport and the associated industries. Any growth in capacity will require someone—either the airport or the Government—to step in and significantly invest in our communities to make sure that they do not suffer the ill effects of far greater levels of aviation in our region.

[John Milne]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. Indeed, part of the problem is that this process is in isolation from 100 other issues; infrastructure is very much one of them, because, as he says, it is already sadly lacking.

As I was saying, the options show little to no variation from each other. It is not three choices; it is one choice repeated three times. Without sight of a genuine alternative that builds on the structure already in place—using routes that already bear traffic—how can the public understand the trade-offs of different pathways? It is worth noting that Heathrow has three clearly varying pathways, which differ in direction and geometric shape from each other, for the public to consider.

If the Gatwick consultation is sound, why has the CAA launched a separate consultation about setting up a national body for the review? That implies that the current model of individual airports designing individual strategies is not working. Is the current governing policy from the CAA, which is known as CAP1616, up to date? Does it consider modernisation of satellite technology and the impact that technology is having on flight concentration? If not, the modernisation of Gatwick could have serious environmental and health consequences for communities such as mine in Horsham.

Why does GAL seem to be rushing for this consultation to be implemented in 2027 when full technical technological roll-out cannot be achieved by 2030 at the earliest, or by 2035 according to other estimates? Why have alternative routes been dismissed on the basis that they conflicted, due to inter-airport conflict, despite there being a pre-agreed process to deal with that by using the Airspace Change Organising Group at a later date? That is not a basis on which to dismiss alternative options.

Airport modernisation is a nationally important ambition: I certainly do not dispute that. Opportunities to make large-scale, comprehensive changes to the entire national network come only once in a lifetime. Therefore, it is absolutely essential that we carry out the process using the most up-to-date guiding principles, with high levels of scrutiny and consultations that provide residents with a real choice. Without doing so, how will we obtain an outcome that is balanced and fair to both airports and communities?

Retaining the southerly route would make negligible difference to carbon emissions or efficiency, but the benefits to residents would be enormous. Public wellbeing is supposed to be a key part of this process, but it seems that we are sacrificing those three villages for no good reason. I therefore ask that the process be reconsidered such that all the communities around Gatwick and the other 19 airports can be presented with a credible and rational set of alternatives. That process must account for the findings of the recently published “Fair and Equitable Distribution Interim Report”, which was financed by the CAA specifically for that purpose. If we carry on as we are and take no action, we risk that important review being vulnerable to unwanted outcomes and a conflict of interest. I urge the Minister to consider the process again and ensure an outcome that will be accepted as legitimate by the public as a whole.