New Civil Engineer
Thomas Johnson
01 October 2025
Gatwick Airport’s development consent order (DCO) application for its new runway required a 16,000-page land assembly reference book to get the greenlight, the land advisor on the application told NCE.
Dalcour Maclaren was the consultancy brought in to advise on land matters for the major infrastructure consenting and its director Mike Ferens told NCE about the vast amount of work that took place to put together the DCO application for the £2.2bn Northern Runway programme.
In February this year, transport secretary Heidi Alexander indicated she was “minded to approve” the project, but on 21 September she then granted the DCO after receiving adequate supplementary information.
Ferens told NCE that Dalcour Maclaren was involved in identifying more than 5,000 land parcels that will be affected by the project. The organisation was then responsible for negotiating 98% of the land agreements needed for delivery before the DCO was authorised. Through this work, 29,000 legal interests were identified that needed to be negotiated.
