AROUND 150 business leaders from the public and private sector have attended the annual Gatwick Diamond Growth Forum in Crawley.

Gatwick Airport CEO Stewart Wingate was the keynote speaker and he highlighted

that a record number of business passengers - 391,000 - departed from Gatwick last month

He discussed opportunities for growing the region’s economy further over the next 15years.

The airport’s economic impact in the Gatwick Diamond has risen to £2.3 billion and 36,000 jobs.

Gatwick’s long haul network also continues to grow as it launched 20 routes last year and is now offering more than 50 long haul destinations.

Mr Wingate said: “Clearly the Gatwick Diamond is currently performing really well and has some real strengths, Gatwick being one of them.

“We are proud to be one of the biggest economic drivers in the South East as we have seen the number of business passengers travelling through Gatwick continue to grow from strength to strength.

“We need to continue to work together to understand how to maintain and grow the competitive position of this area.”

Delegates attending the forum at the Arora Hotel in Crawley, now in its fifth year, also heard from a host of other speakers.

These included Paul Swinney from Centre For Cities, Rosemary French, CEO of Gatwick Diamond Initiative and Robert Pickles, head of corporate and government affairs for Canon UK and Ireland.

Gatwick Diamond Initiative’s chief executive officer Rosemary French said: “We heard some extremely interesting research from Centre for Cities and Grant Thornton which will guide our strategy for economic growth for the next five years.

“It is good to note that the Gatwick Diamond area remains one of the UK’s best performing areas, while recognising that growth brings with it a number of pressures too, which need to be managed to maintain the success of the area.”

Gatwick is the UK’s second largest airport and the most efficient single-runway airport in the world.

It serves more than 228 destinations in 74 countries for 44 million passengers a year on short and long-haul point-to-point services.

It is also a major economic driver for the UK contributing £5.3 billion to national GDP and generating 85,000 jobs nationally.

There are around 24,000 jobs on the wider airport campus alone to boost the local economy.