New owner rules out second Gatwick runway

Sir David Rowlands, chairman of Global Infrastructure Partners, said he had "not a shred of interest" in developing a new runway at the airport, which currently has only one runway serving some 33 million passengers.

At a meeting with the Gatwick Area Conservation Campaign (GACC), he added a new runway was not the policy of the government or of the airport.

Rowlands said that, even if the government started to look more favourably at the prospect of a second runway, Gatwick would have to "think very hard about spending 100m to 200m on a planning application with an uncertain decision".

Global Infrastructure Partners, a private equity fund jointly controlled by Credit Suisse and General Electric, which also owns London City Airport, acquired the West Sussex terminal from BAA in December.

Local conservation groups had been concerned that the new owner would start looking at expansion. Under a long-standing local agreement, there had been an understanding that there would be no new runway at Gatwick before 2019

GACC chairman Brendon Sewill said yesterday: "This firm statement will kill off some silly speculation, and will remove a lot of uncertainty and anxiety." But he warned that campaigners would remain "on guard".

"The government and BAA have previously ruled out new runways at Stansted and at Heathrow, only to announce them a few years later.

"We will stand ready, if need be, to launch a massive campaign to defeat any new runway plan, as we have defeated such plans in the past."

Last year, the Competition Commission ruled that BAA had to sell both Gatwick and Stansted and either Edinburgh or Glasgow airports.

But the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) later upheld the company's claim that there had been "apparent bias" in the commission's decision that it should be forced into a break-up of the group. The tribunal said it would allow more time to hear arguments from both sides as to what should happen next "unless the parties can reach agreement on it". Legal experts suggested this could lead to a formal quashing of the commission's rulings at a new CAT hearing this year.

BAA, owned by the Spanish group Ferrovial, had challenged the legality of the commission's decision to make it sell the airports. The company, whose other terminals include Heathrow, Aberdeen and Southampton, had already decided to sell Gatwick, even before the commission's ruling.

Last week, South Korea's National Pension Service signed a contract with Global Infrastructure Partners to buy a 12 per cent stake in Gatwick.