Campaigners are calling for tough new controls on noise and pollution as passenger numbers grow at a Sussex airport.

Gatwick Airport plans to increase passenger numbers from about 31 million last year to 45 million by 2015 by increasing efficiency, speeding up the check in process and bringing in more aircraft during quiet periods.

Brendon Sewill, chairman of the Gatwick Area Conservation Campaign, is to lobby councils to withhold planning permission for extensions to the North Terminal unless a pollution agreement is drawn up first.

He said: "If they can produce safeguards to prevent increases in pollution and noise and get more people on to public transport so there isn't an increase in road traffic, we will accept the expansion."

April 20, 2005