Gatwick airport to open second runway after legal challenge fails

£2.2bn project will allow about 100,000 more flights a year to use Britain’s second busiest airport

Gatwick airport is to start development of its second runway after campaigners lost a legal challenge to the plans.

The court of appeal on Tuesday dismissed a bid by local campaign groups to challenge an earlier high court ruling that the scheme could proceed.

The £2.2bn project, approved by the transport secretary, Heidi Alexander, in September, will allow about 100,000 more flights a year to use Britain’s second busiest airport.

Pierre-Hugues Schmit, the Gatwick chief executive, said the airport was “very pleased that this ruling brings to an end an eight-year planning and legal process which has carefully tested and scrutinised every aspect of our expansion plans on multiple occasions”.

The plans will involve the West Sussex airport slightly repositioning its emergency runway and using it routinely for short-haul passenger aircraft. It is now among the busiest single-runway airports in the world, and hopes to have the second runway in operation as early as 2030.

The government declared the court ruling a “major milestone for Gatwick and for local communities”.

Alexander said: “Around 13 million more passengers and 100,000 more flights will give holidaymakers greater choice and strengthen global links to help make the UK one of the most attractive places in the world to invest.

“We’ll back expansion that supports growth and our climate goals. To drive forward sustainable change, we’re also investing more than £219m for green fuel production to cut emissions from flying and secure the future of aviation.”

Campaigners had sought a judicial review of the Department for Transport’s decision to approve the plans, arguing that the government had not properly assessed the scheme’s climate impact.

One of the applicants, Peter Barclay, the chair of Gatwick Area Conservation Campaign, said he was disappointed with the ruling. He said: “It is time for governments to wake up and realise that saying yes to the expansion of any and every airport will not kickstart the economy … It will further lock in aviation’s climate, noise and air pollution impacts, increase congestion on roads and public transport and blight local communities.”

Meanwhile, Luton Rising, the council-owned company behind Luton airport, announced that all legal challenges to its expansion plans had now been cleared. The supreme court has dismissed any final possibility of appealing against a high court ruling last November upholding Alexander’s signoff on plans to increase the airport’s annual capacity from 19 million to 32 million passengers by the mid-2040s.

The airport owner said it would create up to 11,000 new jobs and generate up to an additional £1.5bn in annual economic activity, and pledged strict controls on noise and carbon emissions, air quality and surface access to the airport.