Campaigners slam ‘seriously flawed’ Gateway plan

And those campaigners - who have spent the past month painstakingly dissecting the application for the plan - say every single person present agreed the development should not be allowed to take place.

The Coventry and Warwickshire Development Partnership, a joint venture between the Baginton-based airport’s owners Rigby Family Holdings and Roxhill Properties, put forward proposals in September to build a network of highways to support a technology and distribution park - which they say will create up to 14,000 jobs.

But Bubbenhall resident Alan Roe, one of the campaign group’s researchers, says this figure is “meaningless”.

Mr Roe, a former professor of economics at Warwick University who spent ten years working on a World Bank project, said: “The developers’ technological methodology is seriously flawed. They have relied exclusively on Government guidelines on jobs created per land area – for example for every 1,000 square feet, ‘X’ amount of jobs are created.

“But you don’t get people turning up to work just because there is a building.

“The 14,000 figure is a meaningless number. It’s impossible to say how many jobs there will be. It will certainly be a very small number – a few hundred at most.”

Mark Symes, the group’s chairman, who is also the managing director of international furniture company Willis and Gambier, also set aside time to carry out a detailed analysis of the planning application - the associated documents of which he says add up to 10,000 pages.

He said: “There is a complete lack of a business plan or investment plan.

“Developers do not create jobs. Jobs are created by business and business has to be attracted.

“We feel this is being railroaded through on a scale that has never been seen before. But since we have started to expose some of the inaccuracies and blatant exaggeration, some councillors have started to have concerns and doubts.

“The more that we can get these councilllors to start to ask questions, the quicker this will unravel.”

The planning committees of Coventry City and Warwick District Councils are due to make a decision on the matter in mid-December.