Letter sent to Evening Gazette, Northern Echo and Coastal View and Moor news
What colour do you want the gates of local fracking sites to be?
Perhaps Red? That could be the limit of local people's input to decisions about shale gas production, according to a letter leaked to Friends of the Earth.
The letter reveals that the government is planning to take decision-making away from local councils. The letter was written by Energy Secretary Amber Rudd, Communities Secretary, Greg Clark and Environment Secretary Liz Truss to George Osborne last July and it sets out proposals for a government shale gas strategy.
The ministers say they want “a maturing shale gas production industry” within 10 years. Among the proposals to make this happen is changing who would take decisions about planning permission for shale gas production.
The Govt has ALREADY taken away UK landowners mineral rights to what is beneath your own home so they could beaver away without your permission, which they at least have in the US. The Govt has ALREADY moved the goalposts to allow fracking under national parks. In repeated surveys the general public have increasingly said they are against fracking, but the Govt and our MPs are not listening.
At present only the cost of oil, which has bankrupted some US fracking companies, is holding them off and North Yorkshire will have little say being in the "desolate North East" when it bounces back up. Contact your MP (who maybe pro fracking) and tell them what you think, get involved with Friends of the Earth or Frack Free Cleveland but do not wait until it is to late.
Rob Tucker
Co-ordinator Mbro, Redcar & Stockton
Friends of the Earth
