Gatwick Area Conservation Campaign     GACC
 
Campaign Office                                                              01293 863 369
Stan Hill                                                             www.gacc.org.uk  
Charlwood                                                             gacc@btconnect.com
Surrey RH6 OEP                                           
                                                                29 July 2014
 
 
You may be interested to hear the results of the Gatwick Airport runway consultation which are contained in the independent report by Ipsos Mori.  The number of responses in favour of each option was as follows:
 
Option 1       194
Option 2        167
Option 3.       733
None of these options.   6,200
 
 This result is so embarrassing for Gatwick Airport Ltd that they have done all they can to conceal it.  They did not mention it to the airport consultative committee or to the press.  In their report to the Airports Commission it only appears in a pie chart on page 50, nowhere in the text.
 
They claim that 4,003 responses were the result of a campaign  by The Woodland Trust, and can therefore be disregarded.  We do not agree:  many of these responses contained specific comments and were thus not just the result of clicking a button.  They are a foretaste of the nation-wide opposition to any new runway.
 
Even leaving out the Woodland Trust responses, twice as many people voted for 'none of these options' as voted for all three runway options combined.  And that was despite the 'none of these options ' box being difficult to find.
 
761 people agreed that a new runway would benefit the local economy but 2,020 felt that it would not benefit them much or at all.
 
These are remarkable results!  They prove a strong and determined opposition to any new Gatwick runway.
 
Brendon Sewill
Chairman