The Gatwick plans that could turn Kent into a ‘noise sewer’
The old stone church in Ashurst dates back to the Middle Ages. Its graveyard is overgrown and most inscriptions on the headstones are long since worn away by weather and time. It’s a peaceful spot in a corner of rural Kent near Tunbridge Wells. Or rather, it would be peaceful, were it not for a low, insistent roar overhead.
Every few minutes, the birdsong that fills the air around the Church of Saint Martin of Tours is interrupted by a different cry: that of the jets zooming into London Gatwick Airport, some 16 miles to the west.
“It’s very, very noisy,” says Ashurst resident Domenico, 27, who lives not far from the church.
Under new plans for a reorganisation of flight paths, it could be about to get worse. Britain’s 20 busiest airports could see changes introduced that would channel aircraft into narrower routes. It is suggested that these so-called “motorways in the sky” would save time and fuel, decrease delays and reduce noise for residents living under some of the current flight paths. But for those whose homes sit beneath any new routes, there are fears the noise will become close to intolerable.
Last August, the village saw an average of 15 flights a day where flights exceeded over 60 decibels – the equivalent sound of an electric toothbrush or background noise in a restaurant.
No airspace changes have been decided yet, and won’t be confirmed for several more years, pending a public consultation. But analysis of the maps of possible new flight paths into Gatwick indicates that Ashurst – where a four-bed house can sell for between ￡850,000 and almost ￡2 million – could be one of the southern English villages set to suffer.
“It’s catastrophic,” says Domenico, who moved here during the pandemic, when the skies were unusually quiet. “A lot of people are very angry and concerned [the noise] will continue to increase. When we moved here we thought it was going to be peaceful and it just hasn’t turned out to be. If you do go outside and spend time in nature, you will notice the noise is unsustainable already.”
It is not only residents who will be impacted if it becomes even worse, he says, but also the many visitors to the area. Hever Castle, the 14th-century childhood home of Anne Boleyn, sits less than seven miles to the north, while Ashdown Forest, eight miles south-west of Ashurst, inspired A A Milne’s fictional Hundred Acre Wood in his Winnie-the-Pooh stories. Both are tourist magnets but are “being disrupted as we speak”, warns Domenico. “[The new plans would] only disrupt them further,” he claims.
Hever Castle houses one of Gatwick Airport’s own sound recording boxes. Daily, over 250 flights hit that 60 decibel mark during peak season, according to their data.
And every day, a handful will exceed 70 decibels, as loud as a vacuum cleaner. In the worst case scenario, some flights descending to the airport have hit 85 decibels, the point at which hearing damage can occur and create noise equivalent to a blender.
Chris Tomlin, 68, who also lives along the one country road that constitutes most of Ashurst, agrees it can be noisy enough here already. “We don’t like it too much,” he says of the regular droning sound that fills the air.
He has lived here for 20 years and says the aircraft noise used to be constant. “But they alternate the comings and goings [now],” he says, meaning there are periods of respite in this community, where muddy wellies and Land Rovers sit outside homes and dogs bark their warnings from behind front doors.
The flight path changes under consideration are part of a broader nationwide Airspace Modernisation Strategy (AMS) developed by the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), working with the Department for Transport. The need to modernise stems from the fact that the basic design of British airspace has remained the same for decades – aircraft today mostly follow routes put in place in the 1950s – despite advances in technology and growth in passenger demand. According to the CAA, modernisation is “long overdue” and “critical to ensure that UK airspace is fit for purpose in the future”. Their vision, they say, is to deliver quicker, quieter and cleaner journeys as well as more capacity.
The AMS does not itself propose specific changes, but has identified the need to redesign flight paths and requires airports to modernise their airspace. To this end, Gatwick has put forward several initial options, some of which involve using single track arrivals that would send all aircraft arriving from one direction into a new highway. Though a broad mix of options could ultimately be chosen, it’s this idea of channelling aircraft into a single, relatively narrow corridor that has sparked concern on the ground.
“Lots of people would get no noise at all – marvellous,” says Charles Lloyd, a member of the Gatwick Area Conservation Campaign and Gatwick Obviously Not. “Some would get incredibly intense noise such as they had never experienced before.”
Lloyd, 62, lives in the picturesque village of Penshurst on the northern slopes of the Kentish Weald, where the average property price is almost ￡1.9 million, according to Rightmove. If one of the single track arrival options is chosen, Penshurst would escape unscathed, and could thus stand to benefit.
This could bring some relief for residents bothered by the current level of aircraft noise overhead. The woman behind the counter in the village Post Office says at present the noise is very noticeable. Would she welcome quieter skies? “Oh, I’m sure.”
Lelia Kneeshaw, from nearby Speldhurst, is running an art fair in Penshurst’s village hall when The Telegraph visits. “I imagine people here would be delighted [by any reduction in aircraft noise],” she says.
But any such reduction is far from assured: other options on the table – for two- and three-track arrivals – would position Penshurst squarely in the crosshairs, says Lloyd.
Even if a single-track option was adopted, sparing Penshurst, Lloyd would not be celebrating. “Campaigners such as me and others are concerned about our community, but we also have principles, and it’s not fair to impose all this noise on a tiny number of people,” he says. “Unlike with new rail or road links, there’s no compensation here. So let’s say they were to take a single track arrival over Ashurst – that would be inconceivably harmful.”
Robert Rees, 60, whose Penshurst home dates from the 1730s, also sympathises with anyone who finds themselves under a new highway in the sky. “It would be absolutely appalling,” he says. “They can’t just sentence people to a life of hell along a very small track. It could be great for us but equally not great for someone else. We can’t expect one set of people to take the pain for everyone.”
About five miles away, the quiet village of Cowden could be among those that become a good deal noisier if the single-track plans are adopted, says Lloyd. At the height of summer, an aeroplane passes over Cowden about four times an hour currently, he says. “It’s smack under one of the proposed single track flight paths and could have [a plane passing over] every 90 seconds,” he says. “It would be a noise sewer.”
Air navigation guidance requires that, as part of the airspace change process, the impacts of noise on health and quality of life are considered. Yet there’s a sense, justified or otherwise, that despite a public consultation process, communities ultimately won’t have their voices heard; a sense of powerlessness when it comes to challenging commercial interests. It is this that motivates Lloyd, who wants to see the aviation industry better held to account and better regulated.
Sally Pavey, the chairman of the campaign group Communities Against Gatwick Noise Emissions, sees it as a problem of householders paying a heavy price to benefit “low cost fliers who want to go to Alicante”.
She too fears the plans for “concentrated flight paths” will take a toll on anyone living beneath them. “It’s going to significantly decrease your wellbeing and have a real impact on your mental wellbeing,” she says. “If you bought a house to sit in your garden in tranquillity – and Gatwick is surrounded by areas of tranquillity – and all of a sudden aviation is proposing to put a flight path over your garden [that] you paid a premium for, it affects your everyday life.”
For its part, Gatwick says that the programme to modernise UK airspace will be beneficial in enabling aircraft to climb more quickly and take more direct routes, “leading to a reduction in noise, carbon emissions and delays”.
A spokesman says: “All airports in the programme must follow the CAA’s airspace change process, which includes guidelines to ensure decision-making for airspace change is fair and transparent with progress openly documented on the CAA’s website.
“The London Gatwick element of the programme has progressed through two stages of the seven-stage regulatory process, during which stakeholder input has been sought to help the development and assessment of potential design options. No changes to flight paths have been decided. London Gatwick has complied fully with the airspace change process so far, with public consultation being planned for the next stage.”
But such reassurances may not be enough to allay the fears of residents and campaigners. For now, Pavey is convinced that those drawing up the plans “look at straight lines on computer screens” in an abstract sort of way.
“They don’t,” she claims, “give a damn about who’s on the ground.”
