While many people in the UK focused on the royal wedding, the government announced plans to turbo-charge fracking in England.
On 17 May, energy secretary Greg Clark revealed a series of new measures to make sure fracking happens in a timely and easy manner. These include funding councils with £1.6m of taxpayers’ money to ‘help’ them get fracking moving.
As Caroline Lucas
pointed out, “this announcement is a green light for climate breakdown”. But look, a wedding!
“National importance” In his written statement on the new pledges, Clark
says fracking is of “national importance”. So he wants mineral planning authorities, such as county councils, to “give great weight to the benefits” of it. And he dictates that these authorities should not “set restrictions or thresholds” to fracking or other mineral extraction in their area.
Clark also
lays out what the government is willing to do to ensure companies are able to frack to their hearts’ content across England:
- The government will hold a consultation on whether it should treat fracking as “permitted development”. This would potentially mean companies don’t have to apply for planning permission to frack.
- It will also consult on whether to designate fracking projects among the “Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects”. Again, this would allow companies freedom from planning requirements.
- The government will launch a £1.6m taxpayer-funded “shale support fund” to help authorities process companies’ fracking applications faster.
- It will create a new “planning brokerage service”. This would effectively be a government-appointed mediator between relevant companies and authorities to “facilitate timely decision making” on applications.