Fracking firm’s traffic control plans ‘are not enforceable’

TRAFFIC CONTROLS on country lanes where a petrochemicals company wants to drill a test well for potential fracking would be legally unenforceable, a public inquiry has been told.

Scottish firm Ineos wants to drill near the village of Harthill, south Yorkshire, and has taken the plan to a public inquiry after Rotherham Council missed the legal deadline for deciding on a planning application.

Councillors have since decided to refuse permission, but it is now in the hands of a planning inspector who is hearing evidence about the contested elements of the application.

Originally, council highways officials recommended refusal on road safety grounds.

But after Ineos came up with traffic safety measures, the experts accepted the arrangements would work and recommended that the plan was accepted. The roads plan involves the use of passing places to allow traffic to avoid approaching vehicles and a ‘stop-go’ arrangement to regulate the flow of convoys of lorries in and out of the site, near the border with Derbyshire.

But resident Leslie Barlow told the hearing there was no legal power to allow Ineos or its staff to impose the traffic management plan.

Mr Barlow said the Highway Code was clear about who could legally direct traffic, including police officers and school patrol wardens.

But Ineos staff would not fall into that category and instead the scheme would have to be operated on a voluntary basis.

Mr Barlow said: “It would depend on a voluntary system, making it unsafe. Ineos cannot get away from that.

“Access to the site is from a single track lane that was never intended for HGVs. It would be a case of, ‘I’m bigger than you so move over’.

“The traffic management plan is an ad-hoc arrangement and would create an unsafe environment.”

Mr Barlow also has concerns over noise from the site and the impact on the environment.

The Ineos application, if approved, would make way for the drilling of a “listening” well to test geological conditions below ground.

If conditions are deemed suitable, a further planning application would be needed before fracking could start.

Campaign group Yorkshire Friends of the Earth is opposed to the fracking plan on the grounds that further sources of fossil fuels are not needed.