A Posse of High Sheriff’s at Gatwick!

A posse of High Sheriffs from London, West Sussex, East Sussex, Kent and myself came together for an enlightening and enjoyable visit to Gatwick airport.

The day started with a visit to the police station at the airport and a presentation by Chief Superintendent Justin Burtenshaw and Chief Inspector Richard Church, which provided a glimpse of the complexities involved in policing the UK’s second busiest airport handling over 43 million passengers a year. We then were introduced to the Armed Response Team and the Dog Handling Team. The dogs of choice are spaniels due to their tenacity and they are trained just to search for explosives and we were treated to a demonstration of their extraordinary skill in detecting explosive material.

We were then handed over to the operators of Gatwick Airport and Pierre-Hugues Schmit the CEO and his team enlightened us to the complexities of running the busiest single runway airport in the world and the largest single site employer in the South East with more than 22,000 jobs on site (plus 76,500 more across the UK). They have more than 60 airlines flying to over 220 destinations and the recent approval to construct a second runway will create a further 14,000 jobs and generate £1bn a year in economic benefits.

The airport also has a large outreach programme, since 2021 engaging with over 600,000 students encouraging involvement in STEM subjects and environmental sustainability.

The last part of the day was to be taken airside and driven round the airfield seeing the many operations undertaken by the Gatwick Airport Team. We also saw fire crews testing out new breathing apparatus in a smoke filled test plane which rounded off a great day out for our posse.