Gatwick begins £2.2bn works to bring second runway into use by 2029

Construction has begun at Gatwick on the £2.2bn project to bring the airport’s northern runway into routine use, 18 months after the government approved the plan and a year after a legal challenge by local councils and campaigners was dismissed by the high court.

Engineers started work this week on repositioning the centreline of the standby runway 12 metres to the north, far enough from the main runway to allow both to be used at the same time under international safety rules. The runway is currently used only when the main one is closed. The airport’s owners say the change will allow Gatwick to handle 75m passengers a year by the mid-2030s, up from 44m last year, and about 100,000 additional flights.

The work, which the airport is funding privately, also includes a new pier at the north terminal, a reconfigured road system and a bridge over the A23. It is being carried out in phases to keep the airport operating, and the northern runway is scheduled to open for departures of smaller aircraft in the summer of 2029.

“This is the first new runway capacity in the south-east since the second world war, and we are building it without a penny of public money,” said the airport’s chief executive. “London’s airports have been full for a decade. Every year we do not have this, airlines put aircraft in Amsterdam, Paris and Madrid instead.”

Approval came with 29 conditions, including a cap on night flights, a legally binding noise envelope and a requirement that 54% of passengers arrive by public transport before the runway can be used at full capacity, up from about 45% today. The airport has committed £250m to rail and bus improvements, including a rebuilt railway station that opened in 2023.

Opponents say the conditions are unenforceable and that the expansion is incompatible with the government’s climate commitments. The Climate Change Committee, the government’s statutory adviser, has said there should be no net increase in airport capacity in the UK unless the aviation sector is demonstrably on track to cut emissions, and that the sector’s plan to do so relies heavily on sustainable fuels that do not yet exist at scale.

“The planning inspector recommended refusal and the secretary of state overruled him,” said Catherine Dyer of the Communities Against Gatwick Noise and Emissions campaign. “Every household under the flightpath in Horley, Charlwood and Crawley is now going to find out what that decision means. We will be measuring the noise and holding the airport to every single condition.”

The project is expected to support about 14,000 jobs in Sussex and Surrey when complete. The transport secretary said the start of work “shows that this government means it when it says Britain is open for business”, and that a decision on a third runway at Heathrow would follow “in due course”.