Gatwick Airport’s Director of Planning, Sustainability and Corporate Affairs Tim Norwood has hit out at how permitted development rights have allowed offices close to the West Sussex airport to be converted into homes.

Speaking at our Airport Cities Development Conference in Manchester, Mr Norwood said: “We have to ask whether the government has kept it’s promises on permitted development rights. In Gatwick some office accommodation has been transferred into residential accommodation – but without mitigation measures to block out noise as they have been built as office accommodation and not residential. Government policy needs to be very carefully considered, and the location of new housing needs to be very carefully considered as well.”
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Mr Norwood also dismissed the notion that airport operator’s should shoulder responsibility to provide housing as part of their own development plans, adding: “We all recognise there is a housing shortage across the country and a need for LA’s to have a five year housing land supply, however we know that people who live underneath the flight path get annoyed by the operations.

“It’s not for an airport to provide housing, from my experience airports don’t have expertise to deliver housing, it’s not to say we would work with a housing developer but on the understanding that if you build housing close to an airport, those residents will experience noise impact – that needs to be carefully thought though. You can put in as much insulation or mitigation as you want but people will want to use their gardens, they will be impacted [by noise.”

Mr Norwood confirmed that Gatwick is looking to make use of its stand-by runway, which is usually reserved to be used in case of emergencies, as a form of second runway for the airport, which could see passenger numbers rise from the current 46m per year, to as high as 74m.

Speaking to conference delegates Neil Isles, Senior Designer at Portland Design said that a lot of airports don’t have the understanding of what an airport city means and the impact an out-of-town draw can have on other aspects of even large cities.

He said: “We do a lot of work with Amsterdam Schiphol and what it is trying to achieve. It [Schiphol] has no context and place, we have been working for a long time to create place but it is sucking life from Amsterdam in quite significant ways. If you take the PwC’s, Deloitte’s and Microsoft’s and put them on the periphery what is that doing to the centre of Amsterdam?

“You change the dynamic of the city by changing the emphasis of where people work. You have to be very careful going forward about changing that emphasis. Does it become like Venice and be a tourist enclave.”

Mr Isles added that some airports, particularly in Asia had not thought out the full implications of developments in their properties, meaning that many of those spaces lacked a sense of space, adding: “Without people at the heart we are missing the point of trying to design an airport city. In Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia an outlet part-designed in direct proximity to the airport is designed simply for Chinese tourists. They fly into Kuala Lumpur airport, they shop and then fly straight home. That is not what should be thought of when looking to create a community.”

Blackpool Airport also unveiled plans to take advantage of an unlikely source of development close to the terminal by accessing a new fibre-optic undersea cable which is being installed between the UK and US.

Nick Gerrard, Growth & Prosperity Programme Director at Blackpool Council, which owns the airport said: “Aqua Comms are putting in new transatlantic cables which will emerge via the Blackpool Airport Enterprise Zone. It gives us opportunities potential to establish data centres here, we are looking at maximising the opportunities. I may be talking in milliseconds [of time savings] but when it comes to financial institutions those saving matter.”
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