Fracking for gas would devastate countryside

THE brutal reality of fracking is that to get any meaningful amount of gas from the ground would require wholesale devastation of the countryside.

The numbers are horrifying. Previous research has shown we’d need 6,100 fracking sites – that’s one new site a day for 15 years – to replace half the gas we currently import.

That would require approximately 3,500 hectares of land, or around 4,900 football pitches.

That’s why, leaving aside any environmental concerns, fracking is the least popular and least effective way of enhancing energy security. The reason it was banned is because people wanted it banned.

Allowing fracking in the two southern ‘jurassic’ areas, in particular, would be likely to have major visual and polluting impacts on some of our most valuable countryside and coastline, particularly the Jurassic Coast and the South Downs National Park.

Similar damage in the northern area would directly impact the Peak District National Park.

Shale gas deposits in the UK are located under major population centres.

Huge swathes of the northwest and Yorkshire and large south coast resorts and ports, primarily in Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire and Dorset, would be directly in the firing line.

Tom Fyans Director of campaigns and policy at

CPRE