Legal Challenge Against Gatwick Airport’s Second Runway To Begin
The title of this post is the same as that of this article on ITVX.
These four paragraphs add more details.
Plans to challenge a second runway at Gatwick Airport will be heard in the High Court next week.
The campaign and environmental group Communities Against Gatwick Noise Emissions (CAGNE) opposes Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander’s decision to grant development consent for the project.
In the hearing, which will run from 20 to 23 January 2026, CAGNE’s argues that the climate change impacts of the extra runway have not been properly assessed.
The planned expansion would see the repurposing of Gatwick Airport’s emergency runway for use as a second operational runway. The extra capacity is expected to lead to more than 100,000 more flights per year.
These two paragraphs give CAGNE’s case.
CAGNE says that this decision was flawed, arguing that there are numerous gaps in the environmental assessment of the airport expansion. These include a failure to adequately assess inbound flight emissions, the climate impact of non-carbon dioxide emissions, the handling of additional sewage, and noise pollution.
The group also argues that the second runway plans rely too heavily on the UK’s Jet Zero Strategy (JZS), which assumes ambitious improvements in the aviation industry in areas such as fuel efficiency.
My feelings are as follows.
- We need more runway capacity.
- Eventually all aircraft will be powered by electricity, hydrogen or sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).
- Because of the need for large amounts of renewable electricity to make hydrogen and SAF, the runway will need to be near offshore wind farms.
Only Doncaster Sheffield, Gatwick, Liverpool, Stansted and some Scottish airports are near the sea or could be connected to the coast by an easy-to-build cable or pipeline.
CAGNE may well win their case, but I fell Nimbys will also stop Heathrow getting a third runway.
The Anonymous Widower 
We dont need more runway capacity at Gatwick what we need is better use of other regional airports like Southend and Southampton. Mind what we should have had was the Maplin Sands airport planned in the 70’s and done away with Heathrow.
Comment by Nicholas Ronald Lewis | January 20, 2026 |
Radical joined up thinking in the modern era suggests that of the two locations recommended by Rosskill Commission, Cublington or similar was the better option. We now know maplin sands is important for biodiversity.
If you have an green field airport somewhere on the Bucks/Warks border with 4+ runways, it could then be served by HS2 (minimising road traffic) with some additional purpose built tolled motorway connections (free parking for 24 hours in exchange for paying the toll, long term on airport parking available with varying service levels, and car hire). Long distance coaches and rental cars at off airport interchanges closer to motorways with free light rail shuttles.
A large airport “in the middle” connected by high speed rail and good motorways could reasonably replace Heathrow, Luton, Birmingham, Manchester, maybe Coventry/East Midlands (for freight at least), downgrading Stansted.
Comment by MilesT | January 22, 2026 |
my view of airport runway expansion should be “No” .
As a society, we need to be flying less and using less air freight. Let congestion act as a natural constraint, don’t induce more demand.
A family long distance holiday emits as much CO2 as a family house for a year, and contrails also have climate impact (mitigation needing more CO2 to divert aircraft onto suboptimal heights/routes to minimise contrail creation).
that said, we should make existing flying more efficient, delivering same capacity with less fuel wastage and centralised facilities for electric aircraft and sustainable fuel production (CO2 conversion to organic liquid jet fuel via aerial extraction and catalytic combination with H2 generated by green energy electrolysis, not by processing agricultural crops for “sustainable” fuel).
Comment by MilesT | January 22, 2026 |