The government will go to court this
week to defend test drilling at a
fracking site in Lancashire as it comes
under pressure to pay hundreds of
thousands of pounds to cover the cost of
policing anti-fracking protests.
The high court in Manchester will hear
two cases on Wednesday that pit Sajid
Javid, the communities secretary,
against protesters who oppose the
permission granted to fracking
companies for test sites near Blackpool.
In October, Javid overturned Lancashire
county council’s rejection of plans for a
fracking site at Preston New Road near
Little Plumpton, giving the green light to
the energy firm Cuadrilla. He decided
the council was wrong to refuse
planning consent on the basis of visual
impact on the landscape and noise
concerns at the site, which is on a busy
50mph road connecting Fylde villages
with Blackpool.
The legal challenges have been issued by
a group of residents called the Preston
New Road Action Group and Gayzer
Frackman, a professional clown from
Lytham St Annes who changed his name
by deed poll from Geza Tarjanyi. They
argue that the government’s decision to
overrule the council was unlawful
because it failed to properly apply
relevant planning laws and policy.
Javid also faces a legal challenge to his
decision to reopen the public inquiry on
Cuadrilla’s other proposed site at
nearby Roseacre Wood.
Cuadrilla began preparing the Preston
New Road site in early January and has
faced round-the-clock protests ever
since. About 60 officers from Lancashire
police are stationed at the site most
days trying to strike the balance
between facilitating peaceful protest
and allowing Cuadrilla to continue its
legal business activities – currently a
regular flow of lorry deliveries, which
are regularly stopped by demonstrators
lying in the road.
The number of police officers needed
will no doubt increase as Cuadrilla
begins drilling in the next quarter,
according to the local police and crime
commissioner, Clive Grunshaw.
He said the government should foot the
bill as it was Javid who approved the
site, not Lancashire county council or
the police. “It is hard to say how much it
has cost, but the bill already goes into
the hundreds of thousands of pounds
and will go into the millions,” he said
on Sunday, noting that Lancashire
constabulary had received a 25% cut in
government funding since 2010.
“It is not fair or just that these costs
should be borne by the people of
Lancashire. This was a decision taken
by Javid’s department, not Lancashire
county council, and so I really believe
that the government should fund the
policing.”
Grunshaw said he was “agnostic” about
fracking, but that he was concerned
about the pressure and cost of policing
the site. “The strain on officers is
already immense. These officers are
going on shift to be abused and being
portrayed as the enemy when they
really are not. These are Lancashire
officers who live and work in the local
community and who are at the site
instead of dealing with domestic
violence or antisocial behaviour and
keeping people safe,” he said.
Protesters have made complaints about
“police brutality” but Grunshaw said he
had yet to see evidence of any. He said
local activists had built up a good
relationship with the police over recent
years and blamed protesters from
outside the area coming in and
“degrading that trust”.
If the protesters lose their judicial
review this week Cuadrilla will step up
activity on the site, meaning more
protesters and more demands on police,
he said: “This is just the tip of the
iceberg at the moment.”
On Sunday residents from Kirby
Misperton in Ryedale, North Yorkshire,
where a fracking licence was granted
last year in similarly controversial
circumstances, finished a 120-mile walk
to the Preston New Road site.
Meanwhile,
planning officers in
Nottinghamshire
will on Monday
publish their
recommendations
on what could be
the county’s second shale gas well. The
planning application, submitted in May
last year by the IGas subsidiary Dart
Energy , is for one vertical exploratory
well and three groups of groundwater
monitoring boreholes. It does not
include fracking.
In November 2016, the county council
approved plans by IGas for two
exploration wells at Springs Road near
the village of Misson.
Fracking is an extreme form of energy
extraction that involves drilling down
into the earth before a high-pressure
water mixture is directed into the rock
to release the gas inside. Opponents
argue that it causes water pollution and
even earthquakes: in 2011, Cuadrilla
suspended test fracking operations near
Blackpool after two earthquakes of 1.5
and 2.2 magnitude hit the area.
Proponents of fracking argue that
beneath Lancashire and Yorkshire, in
the Bowland shale, lies one of the
richest shale gas resources ever
discovered. Just 10% of it would be
enough to provide 50 years’ worth of
British needs, according to Lord Ridley ,
a pro-fracking peer who owns his own
coal mine.
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