Crawley MP Peter Lamb on London Gatwick's Northern Runway plans

SussexWorld

Crawley MP Peter Lamb attended London Gatwick's Apprenticeship Fair this week. We interviewed him and asked him about the airport's £2.2 billion Northern Runway plans. A decision on the plans is expected to be made at the end of February.

Transcript

00:00The thing to bear in mind is this, is that it's an active planning application, it doesn't

00:03go into your local council, it goes into the planning inspectorate nationally and ministers

00:07finally have to take a decision on that based upon what their planning inspector says. So

00:11because of that they can't give you any direct insight, otherwise it probably would have

00:14been part of the conversation around Rachel Reeves the other day. The big thing to bear

00:17in mind is this, is there's no standing still, so whatever happens at Gatwick is going to

00:20continue to evolve as time goes on and in terms of our local employment, you know, and

00:25in terms of our local transport and things like that, we're going to have to continue

00:27to grow to deal with the capacity that Gatwick has and what it can offer. Whatever comes

00:31out has got to be something that's viable for the area and that's really what my viewpoint

00:34is. Growth is not a bad thing by itself but it's got to come with those bits which enable

00:39that growth to be viable. You've got to make sure that you've got that transport infrastructure,

00:42that you've got the housing, you know, these things have actually got to deliver for the

00:45local community. If you haven't got that then it becomes more of a problem and so it's never

00:48the issue by itself, it's about making sure that the whole thing in the round actually

00:52delivers to the area. Those groups have got valid points that they want to raise, it's

00:55absolutely right that people make their views heard and, you know, we've got to listen to

00:58all of that and make sure that it's taken into account as part of that decision. But

01:02you're not going to necessarily always get everyone happy all at the same time about

01:05the same issues. There's always going to be people who are for, people who are against.

01:07The main thing is making sure that as far as possible, whatever happens, you've compensated

01:12for whatever negative impacts or positive impacts there are.

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