Lancashire Fracking Latest: Little Plumpton decision deferred until Monday; Roseacre Wood’s decision is refused

The decision as to whether fracking (hydraulic fracturing, a technique in which water and chemicals are pumped into shale rock at high pressure to extract shale gas) at Cuadrilla’s proposed site at Little Plumpton has been postponed until Monday to give councillors time to take additional legal advice.

The county council have been considering the Little Plumpton bid since Tuesday after Cuardrilla launched a request to reverse an order to suspend fracking passed in 2011.

Lengthy legal discussions were held in private between Tuesday and 5pm last night.  The committee’s deputy chairman, Labour councillor Kevin Ellard, put forward a motion to reject the Little Plumpton plan on the grounds it did not meet a number of planning guidelines including visual impact and landscape.

His motion failed but his fellow committee members passed a second motion to allow the legal advice being considered to be made public.  However by the time it arrived it was 5pm and councillors decided it was too late to make a final decision.

There were around 200 protesters waiting outside County Hall in Preston for the decision and the majority of those protestors seemed to agree that the new Monday deadline wouldn’t give councillors long enough to consider all of the legal arguments.  Friends of the Earth’s spokesman Jasper Singh went one stage further accusing the committee of “not behaving democratically” despite the council’s claims that those involved in the decision had been under “intolerable pressure” given the level of controversy attached to the project.

Meanwhile councillors are have refused the application for the Roseacre Wood site on the grounds planning officers have maintained throughout that there would be “an unacceptable impact” on local roads.

Marcus Johnstone, cabinet member for environment, planning and cultural services, and member of the development control committee, said: “The development control committee has listened very carefully to many hours of evidence both for and against the proposal, and considered the report of the council’s planning officers.  The decision to refuse this application has been reached by a vote of the committee, and each member of the committee has ultimately cast their vote based on the evidence they have heard and whether they think the proposal is acceptable.”

The committee approved a separate application for Cuadrilla to monitor its operations at Roseacre.  The industry and protestors alike now wait for the decision on Little Plumpton, which is expected on Monday.

If you require any legal advice on energy and environmental laws surrounding issues such as fracking, contact one of our teams of lawyers in Lancaster, Preston, Kendal, Garstang and Clitheroe.

Your main contact at our head office in Preston is Katie Kozlowska, please call 01772 258321 or email Katie.Kozlowska@harrison-drury.com.