Shale gas infrastructure projects not to be fast-tracked

Plans for onshore gas schemes including shale gas exploration will no longer be fast-tracked as "nationally significant" business by the Government.

This opens up the possibility of future decisions on projects being decided at local council level instead of by central government.

The Government had proposed in a consultation last year that the planning regime for “nationally significant” infrastructure planning set out in the Planning Act 2008 could be extended to some categories of business and commercial projects.

One of the categories, set out in Annex A of the consultation, was “onshore oil and gas exploration” that would “allow developers of nationally significant business or commercial projects to apply to the Secretary of State for the option of using the streamlined planning regime set out in the Planning Act”.

This would involve proposals being considered by the Planning Inspectorate, with the decision being taken by the appropriate Secretary of State, or the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change in the case of onshore oil and gas projects.

The Government has announced today in its response to the consultation that it “has concluded that applications for planning permission for onshore oil and gas schemes, including any future planning proposals for shale gas development, should not be included in the new business and commercial category but will keep this under review.”

Tony Bosworth, climate and energy campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said:” The Government’s move to keep any future shale gas production decision making in the hands of democratically-elected local councils is spot on.

“The concerns of local people about the impact of fracking locally and globally must be fully heard.”

The controversial practice of shale gas exploration has already received protests at a local level in the UK. This week campaigners held a British tea party outside shale gas exploration company Cuadrilla’s Lower Stumble site close to the village of Balcombe in West Sussex.

Cuadrilla had already held a public meeting in the village to answer public questions that was attended by 400 residents.

Ken Cronin, chief executive of the UK Onshore Operators Group, said: “We are in an exploration phase and that means that the number of sites is quite limited in that first phase and also small, so it is unlikely that they would have met any sort of requirement to be nationally significant anyway.

“It is only when we get into the production phase that the sites become bigger, but that is three or four years away. For us, at this stage it is all about working with local communities, engaging with them and going through the planning process.”