Chichester District Council
Issue

Issue - meetings

Response to Gatwick Masterplan Consultation

Meeting: 08/01/2019 - Cabinet (Item 636)

636 Gatwick Airport Draft Master Plan 2018 pdf icon PDF 101 KB

The Cabinet is requested to consider the agenda report and its two appendices in the agenda supplement and to make the following resolution:

 

That the recommended response set out in appendix 2 to the agenda report be endorsed as Chichester District Council’s response to the consultation on the draft Gatwick Airport Master Plan.

 

Additional documents:

Decision:

RESOLVED

 

(1)  That the recommended response set out in appendix 2 to the agenda report be endorsed as Chichester District Council’s response to the consultation on the draft Gatwick Airport Master Plan.

 

(2)  That this decision is urgent and therefore is not subject to Chichester District Council’s call-in procedure, the consent of the Chairman of the Council having been obtained both that this decision is reasonable in all the circumstances and that it should be treated as a matter of urgency, having regard to the consultation’s closing date of 10 January 2019.

 

[Note In accordance with para 36 in section 4.5 in Part 4 of Chichester District Council’s Constitution, the fact that this decision was taken as a matter of urgency and the reason for the urgency will be formally reported to the Council meeting on Tuesday 22 January 2019]

 

 

 

Minutes:

The Cabinet received and considered the agenda report and its two appendices in the main agenda supplement.

 

This item was presented by Mrs S Taylor (Cabinet Member for Planning Services).

 

Mr T Guymer (Principal Planning Officer (Strategic Planning)) and Mr M Allgrove (Planning Policy Manager) were in attendance for this matter.

 

Mrs Taylor described Gatwick Airport’s status as the second busiest airport in the UK in terms of the number of passengers (45.7 million in 2018, expected to rise to 53 million by 2023) and as a major employer and economic influence in the south east of England. Its impact on Chichester District was in both economic and environmental terms, particularly for the north of the area due to noise disturbance from overhead aircraft. Since it would take a long time to construct a new runway at Heathrow (a decision confirmed by the government in October 2016), it was acknowledged that in the meantime better use should be made of existing runways. In the case of Gatwick, this meant its standby runway, the deployment of which was currently restricted by a legal agreement. The owners of Gatwick had prepared a draft master plan which set out the immediate priorities and considered three growth strategies: scenarios 1 to 3 in para 3.19 of the report. Those scenarios were not mutually exclusive and all of them could be pursued if the requisite consents were obtained. She referred to an analysis by officers of the potential impacts (appendix 1) and the proposed consultation response (appendix 2). Clearly further evidence was required to justify many of the aspirations and objectives in the draft document and thus officers advised that (a) broad support should be offered for scenario 1, (b) concerns be expressed in relation to scenario 2, especially the ability of existing transport infrastructure to accommodate the anticipated increase in the use of the airport, the potential impact on housing needs in the wider area and the environment including noise, and (c) the proposal to safeguard land in scenario 3 should be questioned in view of the Gatwick option not having been ultimately supported by the government.

 

Mrs Taylor concluded by advising that this matter was to be treated as an urgent decision and so not subject to CDC’s call-in procedure in the Constitution because the consultation response needed to be submitted by the deadline of Thursday 10 January 2019, which would be the first day of the call-in process for executive decisions made at this meeting. In accordance with the Constitution the Chairman of the Council had consented to the call-in process being disapplied in the case of this decision of the Cabinet.  

 

Mr Guymer and Mr Allgrove did not add to Mrs Taylor’s introduction.

 

Mrs E Hamilton (Chairman of the Council), who was present as an observer, came to the table and informed the Cabinet that she had read the papers for this item both after their publication and again earlier on the morning of this meeting, when she had also spoken  ...  view the full minutes text for item 636


 

Top of page