Cuadrilla apply for deferral of crucial LCC DCC meeting

Defend Lytham are not surprised to hear that Cuadrilla have requested a deferral in the determination of their planning applications. No doubt they are uncomfortable about LCC councillors deciding the fate of their exploration wells in a week where the former Conservative Environment Secretary, Caroline Spelman has called for a moratorium on shale gas exploration, citing concerns over climate impact, and when the fracking related proposals in the Government’s hugely unpopular Infrastructure Bill will be coming under intense scrutiny.

It is hard to understand how, having failed to satisfy the planning officers in the first instance they now expect to be allowed back for a second bite of the cherry, and we note that whilst they claim to be able to reduce the noise from their activities to a level no greater than 37dB, they appear to have had problems in Balcombe (1) keeping to the 42 Db limit imposed by the council there, and had to stop work whilst this was investigated.

We also have some serious concerns over the other impact issues with which the Planning Officers declared themselves satisfied, and we would like to raise a question as to whether some of the assumptions made in the Report are in fact acceptable under the National Planning Policy Framework.

Any deferral of this meeting will be hugely inconvenient to a large number of people, including the Councillors on the Development Control Committee and those who have arranged to speak to the various issues at the meeting. Unless Cuadrilla can come up with an altogether more convincing explanation we can see no reason why the meeting should not go ahead as originally planned