Gatwick Northern Runway order corrected in 2026

According to legislation.gov.uk, this is not a fresh decision on whether Gatwick can use its Northern Runway more intensively. The main Gatwick Airport (Northern Runway Project) Development Consent Order 2025 came into force on 12 October 2025, and the correction order was made on 20 January 2026 before taking effect on 21 January 2026. (legislation.gov.uk) Legislation.gov.uk now lists the correction order as 2026 No. 1055, while the earlier published correction text appears as 2026 No. 43. Read together with the source note supplied here, that points to a republication after a classification problem rather than a new policy move. The National Archives’ Statutory Instrument Practice says non-print local SIs are usually used for very limited or temporary local measures, while some local SIs are printed when the area covered is wider or the subject is more general. (legislation.gov.uk)

UK Parliament describes statutory instruments as the most common form of secondary legislation: they are the legal tools ministers use to make detailed changes without passing a whole new Act. In this case, the correction order sits under the Planning Act 2008, which is the law behind development consent orders for major infrastructure. (parliament.uk) If you are new to this area, a development consent order is the legal package that can give a major project planning permission and a bundle of related powers in the same document. The original Gatwick order did that in 2025, authorising works including moving the existing northern runway 12 metres north and carrying out related airport and access works. (legislation.gov.uk)

This January 2026 order exists because the 2025 Gatwick order contained what the Planning Act calls correctable errors. Schedule 4 to the Act allows the Secretary of State to correct an error or omission in a development consent decision, but only if the legal conditions are met. One of those conditions is a request from the applicant or a written statement from the Secretary of State, and another is that the relevant local planning authorities are informed. (legislation.gov.uk) That is why the text matters even if the prose looks dry. This is not the same thing as reopening the whole merits debate about airport growth. It is a tightly drawn correction process for fixing wording inside a decision that has already been made. (legislation.gov.uk)

When you scan the schedule, much of it is classic legal housekeeping. The Department for Transport’s text fixes cross-references, corrects typing slips such as ‘principle’ to ‘principal’, repairs awkward wording in roads and compulsory purchase provisions, changes ‘agree’ to ‘agreed’, corrects a Thames Water email address, and adds a missing certified document to Schedule 12. (legislation.gov.uk) That may sound minor, but legal instruments depend on exact wording. A wrong schedule number, a missing definition or a broken cross-reference can make it harder for councils, residents, landowners or the promoter to work out what the order actually requires. (legislation.gov.uk)

The correction with the clearest practical weight is the insertion of article 29A, headed ‘Power to override easements and other rights’. In plain English, it says authorised activity within the order limits can go ahead even if it interferes with certain land rights or breaches a contractual land-use restriction, so long as the activity is carried out in line with the order itself. (legislation.gov.uk) Just as important, the same article sets out the compensation route. It ties compensation to the Compulsory Purchase Act 1965, and it says that if a person deriving title from the undertaker should pay but does not, that liability can still be enforced against the undertaker. Later corrections in the schedule also add article 29A into protective provisions for National Highways and railway interests, which shows this was not a stray drafting footnote. (legislation.gov.uk)

The order also tidies definitions and noise-related wording in Schedule 2. It removes some misplaced text around ‘eligible premises’ and ‘potentially eligible premises’, inserts a definition of ‘highway works’, and adjusts several noise control provisions, including the language used for future contour areas and review points. (legislation.gov.uk) For readers following the community impact side of the project, that matters because definitions decide who falls inside a scheme and which documents officials must treat as the certified version. Schedule 12 was also amended so that a ‘noise insulation scheme document’ from Gatwick Airport Limited’s 24 April 2025 submission is expressly listed among the documents to be certified. (legislation.gov.uk)

**What this means:** if you are tracking the politics of Gatwick expansion, do not read this as a fresh approval for the project. Read it as a lesson in how UK infrastructure law corrects itself after a formal decision, and in why publication details still matter for public traceability. Legislation.gov.uk’s record now shows the correction order as 2026 No. 1055, while the earlier text appears under No. 43. (legislation.gov.uk) There is a wider media-literacy point here too. UK Parliament says statutory instruments are often short documents that make precise legal changes, and legislation.gov.uk says their explanatory notes are meant to make the effect clearer for non-lawyers. So when you meet a notice like this, the useful question is not ‘is this boring?’, but ‘what exactly has been changed, and who does that change affect?’. (parliament.uk)