Travellers heading to London Gatwick will pay £10 instead of £7 to use the airport’s forecourt drop-off lanes from 6 January 2026 after the airport announced a steep 40 per cent price rise. Chief executive Stewart Wingate blamed the increase squarely on last week’s Autumn Budget, which more than doubled Gatwick’s annual business-rates bill from about £40 million to £90 million over the next three years.
Business-rate revaluations normally hit high-street retailers hardest, but airports have again emerged as some of the UK’s biggest single-site rate-payers; only Heathrow now pays more than Gatwick. Wingate told investors the combined hit of higher rates and still-elevated borrowing costs threatened to “undermine confidence” in the airport’s £2.2 billion capital plan to bring Gatwick’s standby runway into routine use, a project designed to lift annual capacity from 45 million to 80 million passengers and inject £1 billion into national GDP.
![Gatwick Airport hikes drop-off fee by 40% after Budget rate-rise blow]()
For mobility managers and travel buyers the price rise is more than just an irritant to holiday-makers: Gatwick is the UK’s second-busiest business-travel airport and a key low-cost carrier hub. Ground-transport consultants estimate that a typical Monday-morning corporate shuttle serving 25 premium travellers will add roughly £600 in annual costs from the drop-off increase alone. Taxis and ride-hailers can pass the charge straight through, but employers operating private buses or contracting coach companies must now absorb or re-invoice the difference.
Gatwick stresses that passengers can still be dropped for free at long-stay car parks, with a six-minute shuttle to the terminals, and that Blue Badge holders remain exempt. Yet the move highlights a wider trend: as UK airports shoulder higher operating costs—from sustainability upgrades to new security scanners and the upcoming Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) carrier-compliance regime—ancillary fees are rising faster than headline air fares. Mobility teams planning 2026 budgets should therefore revisit total trip-cost assumptions, especially for assignments requiring frequent airport transfers around London and the South-East.
Business-rate revaluations normally hit high-street retailers hardest, but airports have again emerged as some of the UK’s biggest single-site rate-payers; only Heathrow now pays more than Gatwick. Wingate told investors the combined hit of higher rates and still-elevated borrowing costs threatened to “undermine confidence” in the airport’s £2.2 billion capital plan to bring Gatwick’s standby runway into routine use, a project designed to lift annual capacity from 45 million to 80 million passengers and inject £1 billion into national GDP.
For mobility managers and travel buyers the price rise is more than just an irritant to holiday-makers: Gatwick is the UK’s second-busiest business-travel airport and a key low-cost carrier hub. Ground-transport consultants estimate that a typical Monday-morning corporate shuttle serving 25 premium travellers will add roughly £600 in annual costs from the drop-off increase alone. Taxis and ride-hailers can pass the charge straight through, but employers operating private buses or contracting coach companies must now absorb or re-invoice the difference.
Gatwick stresses that passengers can still be dropped for free at long-stay car parks, with a six-minute shuttle to the terminals, and that Blue Badge holders remain exempt. Yet the move highlights a wider trend: as UK airports shoulder higher operating costs—from sustainability upgrades to new security scanners and the upcoming Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) carrier-compliance regime—ancillary fees are rising faster than headline air fares. Mobility teams planning 2026 budgets should therefore revisit total trip-cost assumptions, especially for assignments requiring frequent airport transfers around London and the South-East.
Source: Financial Times
