Fracking: local views
SIR – The Government’s proposals to fast-track fracking would disregard the wishes of local communities, remove decision-making powers from local councils and strip the requirement for fracking companies to apply for planning permission for shale gas exploration. If approved, these proposals would be as shocking as they would be harmful.
Councils are elected by local people, for local people, to make decisions on issues that affect their area. It is a perversion of local democracy to simplify the planning process for non-hydraulic exploration so that communities have to hand over the final say on shale production to a minister. It will undermine the principles of our planning system.
The risks of injecting chemicals into the earth, to remove carbon-emitting fossil fuels, are well known and could have a disastrous effect on our countryside. Everywhere fracking has been proposed, it has been vehemently opposed.
We, the voice of the environmental sector, are calling on the Government to drop proposals that risk opening the door to fracking on an industrial scale, and threaten the health and tranquillity of our green and pleasant land. Far from removing local people’s voices from the discussion, it is imperative that they have their say. Crispin Truman
Chief Executive Officer, Campaign to Protect Rural England Simon Marsh
Head of Sustainable Development, RSPB and 18 others; see telegraph.co.uk