London Gatwick held it's third Economic Summit at the Hilton Hotel, South Terminal. More than 200 delegates including businesses, stakeholders and local authorities attended. Here Stewart Wingate explains what the summit was about and what it hoped to achieve
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Well this is the third year mark that we've run the summit so we're delighted that we've
00:05continued this great work and this is the biggest one today we've got about 200 delegates here
00:10that includes many partners from business but also from the public sector as well so lots of our
00:16councils are here which we're delighted to see them participating and also our business
00:22association groups so there's just lots of delegates who are really wanting to have this
00:27conversation about how do we optimize the regional economy and we're pleased to play our role as
00:32Gatwick Airport in hosting this event given that we're a big catalyst to the regional economy.
00:37Well obviously we have economists to review what is the positive impact of Gatwick on the regional
00:42economy currently we generate about 4.1 billion pounds through our activities to the regional
00:49economy so we're a huge anchor to the regional economy and we're delighted to play that role
00:55hence we host this event on an annual basis but of course we're not stopping there what we'd
01:00really like to see in the new year is the government give us permission for the routine
01:04use of our northern runway because in due course when we develop that facility we'll actually
01:09create about 14,000 additional jobs across the region some of which will be on the airport
01:15but also an additional 1 billion pounds of GVA to the regional economy. So as we've been holding
01:21these conferences obviously one of the purposes is to take feedback from the delegates and one of
01:26the big pushes from the delegates is for the airport to form an airport economic zone so we've
01:32decided to take that forward this year we'll start this before the end of 2024 and we'll be reaching
01:39out and involving all of the different partner organizations to get their input as we start to
01:44form a board which will be chaired by our head of external affairs and policy.