SECRETARY of State for Transport Alistair Darling is to be challenged in the High Court over ignoring Gatwick as a major hub airport on the international scene.

Medway's councillors last night decided on the action after their director of development and environment, Richard Simmons, told them no one could understand why Mr Darling was ignoring Gatwick and Cliffe was being proposed.

He told an emergency meeting of the full council that the Transport Secretary had rejected further developing Gatwick because of a local planning agreement.

When the last expansion of the airport was approved, the British Airports Authority gave local councils in Sussex an undertaking not to seek further expansion of London's second airport for 20 years.

Yet Dr Simmons said the Secretary of State was prepared to consider ignoring international orders intended to protect the Hoo Peninsula's Thames shore from any development. There is a number of Sites of Special Scientific Interest, as well as the world's top-ranking Ramsar protection for environmental and natural features between Grain and Higham.

"The only decision the Secretary of State has so far taken is to exclude Gatwick and we can only go for a judicial review to consider decisions he has made," he told the councillors.

He said such a decision did not stop the council from later questioning the suitability of Gatwick to be home to the new London hub. The emergency meeting of the council had been called by the Liberal Democrats, but Labour and Conservative councillors all agreed on the principle of starting court proceedings as quickly as possible.

Mr Darling announced at the press briefing after his address to the House of Commons that he was not willing to consider Gatwick. Instead he proposed to meet further airport demand by turning Cliffe into an international airport with double the capacity of Heathrow.

He would move 40 per cent of existing aircraft in the south east into Cliffe as soon as it opened in 2011 so that the developers had a return on their investment.