Any fracking in Lancashire must have community consent, minister says

Speaking ahead of the expected release of the strategy on Thursday, Kwasi Kwarteng told the Sunday Telegraph that local opposition to either option will be taken into account.

No local councils were keen on either Cuadrilla’s Preston New Road or the Roseacre fracking wells, and huge numbers of protestors, including many based locally, opposed fracking in Lancashire at the time the wells were being developed. The flurry of earth tremors associated with the wells subsequently prompted the Government’s temporary ban on fracking. Cuadrilla had been ordered to seal the wells but were granted a reprieve last week.

Mr Kwarteng said: “The thing with onshore wind and with fracking is that it has to be community consent. We don’t live in a totalitarian country where the Government, the man or woman in Whitehall, can say ‘Right, we’re going to do this’, without some large measure of consent from local communities. And in both of those technologies, frankly, there has been considerable local opposition.

“That doesn’t mean to say we’re shutting the door on both, but it does mean that any movement has to have a large measure of local consent.”

He added that, while he would be comfortable living next to a set of wind turbines, that would not overrule any local dissent.

“If there’s a plan in a particular community, it’s what they think that matters. It’s not my aesthetic preference that’s going to determine it.”