The Planning Court has upheld the first planning permission granted in England for full fracking operations.
However, local campaigners and Friends of the Earth (FOTE) have vowed to continue the fight against fracking operations in North Yorkshire.
Mrs Justice Lang ruled that North Yorkshire County Council had been entitled to grant planning consent granted to Third Energy UK Gas for hydraulic fracturing – fracking – on land at Ryedale, North Yorkshire. The permission, granted in May, was the first in England for fracking on a production scale, as opposed to for exploratory operations.
She said that the real thrust of the objections put forward was that energy requirements “ought to be met by other, less environmentally damaging means” than fracking.
However, she said that this was a decision of committee members of a minerals planning authority with specialist knowledge, and multiple gas wells in its region.
She said: “This was essentially a judgment for the committee to make. They were extensively briefed by officers on the climate change issue, as well as the government’s policy in favour of shale gas.”
Following the decision, FOTE’s Donna Hume said: “The judge found that North Yorkshire councillors had assessed the impacts of climate change. But we know that climate change was barely mentioned at that crucial council meeting where the decision to allow fracking was taken, and more damningly, that councillors didn’t have the information about the total carbon emissions produced from the fracking project.
“Residents have said they will continue to do everything they can to peacefully prevent Barclays-owned Third Energy from fracking, and we will be standing with them.”
The campaigners had claimed that the authority unlawfully failed to carry out an assessment of the indirect, secondary or cumulative climate change impacts from the development when considering the environmental impacts of the proposal.
R (on the application of Friends of the Earth Ltd and another) v North Yorkshire County Council Planning Court (Lang J) 20 December 2016
