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Planners extend deadline for shale gas developments in Lancashire

Lancashire County Council has agreed with Cuadrilla to extend the time period to make decisions on planning applications for shale gas development at two new sites to 30 June 2015.

The council has received applications from the oil and gas company to drill, frack, and test gas flows, with associated separate applications for environmental monitoring, at two sites in Lancashire - Preston New Road at Little Plumpton, and Roseacre Wood at Roseacre.

The extension follows a request by Cuadrilla to consider additional information about the applications.

Cuadrilla’s request resulted in the deferral of a meeting of the Development Control Committee in January 2015 at which councillors had been due to make a decision on each application.

The council has subsequently consulted upon the new information provided by Cuadrilla and planning officers must now review the feedback from the consultation period, and the details supplied by Cuadrilla, before preparing reports for a further meeting of the committee.

Consultation on the further information relating to both sites took place from Friday 20 March to Friday 17 April to allow representations to be made. It had previously been agreed that both applications would be decided by 30 April 2015.

The council will announce dates for the applications to be determined by the Development Control Committee in due course.

Earlier this week, a report from AMION Consulting and commissioned by Peel Gas & Oil stated that the Bowland Shale, and in particular the Ocean Gateway area stretching from the port of Liverpool to Manchester, could become a UK and international ‘centre of excellence’.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ellen Forster .