According to legislation.gov.uk, the Gatwick Airport (Northern Runway Project) Development Consent (Correction) Order 2026 was made on 20 January 2026 and came into force on 21 January 2026. It was published in substitution for S.I. 2026/43 after the earlier instrument was placed in the wrong publication class, having been treated as a local non-print instrument rather than a printed local instrument. The correction order does not grant a fresh consent for Gatwick. It amends the Gatwick Airport (Northern Runway Project) Development Consent Order 2025, the development consent order made under the Planning Act 2008, where the Secretary of State concluded that the 2025 Order contained correctable errors.
The legal route used here is the correction procedure in Schedule 4 to the Planning Act 2008. The instrument records that the applicant submitted a written request for corrections within the statutory period, and that the Secretary of State then informed the relevant local planning authorities covering the land affected by the 2025 Order. That point is important for planning practitioners. Schedule 4 is intended for errors and omissions that can be fixed without reopening the full examination or remaking the order from the start. In regulatory terms, this is a targeted textual amendment rather than a wider change to the project approval.
Article 2 of the 2026 Order applies the amendments by reference to a schedule. That schedule format is standard in development consent order drafting. One column identifies where the change is made, a second explains whether text is being substituted, inserted or omitted, and a third supplies the operative wording. For those using the Gatwick order in live work, the effect is straightforward. The corrected text, not the unamended 2025 print alone, is the version that must be read for land rights, compensation and any provision that depends on the amended definitions.
The most substantial correction reproduced in the published text is the insertion of a new article 29A, headed 'Power to override easements and other rights'. In broad terms, it states that authorised activity carried out within the Order limits is permitted by the Order even where the activity interferes with interests or rights covered by the article, or breaches a contractual restriction on the use of land, provided the activity is undertaken in accordance with the Order. This is a material drafting point in any major infrastructure consent. Airport works, access arrangements and related land use can cut across private easements, restrictive covenants and comparable rights. By stating the override power expressly, the correction order reduces doubt about the legal footing for carrying out authorised development where third-party rights would otherwise stand in the way.
New article 29A is also careful on compensation. The rights covered by the provision include easements, liberties, privileges, rights or advantages annexed to land, natural rights to support, and restrictions as to the use of land arising by contract. Where those rights are overridden, compensation is payable under sections 7 or 10 of the Compulsory Purchase Act 1965 and is to be assessed on the same basis as comparable compensation under those provisions. The drafting also preserves a clear liability chain. If a person deriving title from the undertaker becomes liable to pay compensation and does not do so, that liability is enforceable against the undertaker itself. At the same time, the article states that it does not authorise acts or omissions that would be actionable on grounds other than the specified interference or breach. The override is therefore defined and limited, not open-ended.
A further amendment shown in the schedule concerns the definition of 'eligible premises'. The corrected wording provides that eligible premises are premises approved in writing by the relevant local planning authority after its consideration of potentially eligible premises put forward by the undertaker. Even though the extracted text does not reproduce the wider provision in which that definition is used, the change still matters. Defined terms in a development consent order often determine who may enter a scheme, trigger mitigation, or receive the benefit of a protective measure. A written approval by the local planning authority gives that definition a clearer administrative basis.
The order was signed on behalf of the Secretary of State for Transport by Natasha Kopala, Head of the Transport and Works Act Orders Unit, on 20 January 2026. The explanatory note on legislation.gov.uk states that the instrument corrects errors and omissions in S.I. 2025/1054 following a request made under paragraph 1(5)(a) of Schedule 4 to the Planning Act 2008. For local authorities, landowners and scheme advisers, the key point is not that the Northern Runway project has been newly approved, but that the legal text governing the existing approval has been tightened. Any review of the Gatwick consent should therefore be carried out against the 2025 Order as corrected by the 2026 instrument, rather than against the earlier text or the superseded publication record.