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Build Runway At Gatwick, City Chiefs Demand

Ministers should sanction the construction of a new runway at Gatwick Airport and end dithering over the crucial issue of aviation capacity, two leading City figures demanded this weekend.

Crispin Odey, the billionaire hedge fund manager, and Nigel Wilson, chief executive of Legal & General (LSE: LGEN.L - news) , told Sky News that the Sussex airport had usurped Heathrow as the politically deliverable option for building a new runway.

Their remarks reflect growing anger among City and business leaders over repeated delays to the implementation of Sir Howard Davies’s report, which last year nominated a third Heathrow runway as the preferred option.

To the consternation of those who argue that the delays risk damaging Britain’s economy, however, David Cameron has delayed a decision until at least this summer on environmental grounds.

"The answer to the Government’s conundrum is actually quite plain: stop fixating on Heathrow and expand Gatwick. Expansion at Gatwick provides largely the same connectivity and economic benefits as expansion at Heathrow but at a fraction of the environmental impact, and at considerably less cost to passengers and to the taxpayer. Gatwick’s scheme enhances competition in the sector and is simple and quicker to build," Mr Odey wrote in an open letter seen by Sky News.

"Most importantly, Gatwick faces no legal impediment to expansion, whereas Heathrow’s expansion has been permanently stalled by noise and air quality issues and will continue to be so in future. Above all, the business community wants something to happen – and Gatwick is the option that can happen. We should get on with it," the Odey Asset Management founder wrote.

Mr Wilson, who as the head of L&G has delivered billions of pounds in commitments to renewing UK infrastructure, warned that the "50-year runway debate presents the worst of Britain to the world".

"We have to invest in new economically and socially useful activities, otherwise we are heading for a world of zeroes; zero real wage growth, zero productivity growth and zero inflation," he said.

"Today, the £9bn Gatwick investment feels more deliverable economically and politically than the £19bn Heathrow solution and unlike the £25bn Hinkley nuclear project and the £60bn HS2 project, both are financeable and make Britain more globally competitive."

The political impetus to deliver a new runway was further clouded in recent days when Andrew Tyrie, the Treasury Select Committee chairman, suggested that Sir Howard’s report omitted key data relevant to the economic case for expanding both Gatwick and Heathrow.

Insiders said that Edelman, a public relations firm whose clients include Gatwick, has in recent weeks approached company bosses to ask them to declare support for expanding London’s second-busiest airport.