Permitted Development and Shale Gas Exploration

Lord Herbert of South Downs Excerpts

Thursday 28th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Nick Herbert (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

As the House will know, my constituency of Arundel and South Downs is the most beautiful in England— 250 square miles of Sussex countryside, with no large towns but only small villages and small market towns. Half of it is in the protected landscape of the South Downs national park.

Nevertheless, there is oil extraction in my constituency, and it is entirely uncontroversial. There are small oil wells, and I have never received any complaint about them. I assume that oil tankers visit regularly to take the oil off site, but because the wells are located sensibly the public do not get excited about them. My neighbour’s constituency of Chichester has an oil well in the national park itself. It is similarly uncontroversial because it is near a main road, not a community.

Public interest in the proposed fracking in West Sussex takes two forms. There is concern about below-the-ground activity: will it have an impact on local water sources, for instance? Then there is concern about the above-the-ground activity: what will the exploratory drilling and then any potential further drilling mean for future traffic movements that will affect neighbourhoods? My experience is that communities get particularly exercised about proposals when they fear that the countryside in which they live is about to become industrialised and that there will suddenly be significant lorry movements through otherwise quiet country lanes and villages—not just during the exploratory period, but potentially afterwards, if large sources are discovered.

It fell to West Sussex County Council, as the responsible local authority, to assess whether one proposal for exploratory drilling, near Wisborough Green, a beautiful village in my constituency, was appropriate. The council looked at the proposed traffic movements down very narrow lanes and was very unhappy about the impact. Ultimately, the council, taking no view on the merits of fracking or drilling otherwise and not having a policy of animus against the extraction of the mineral, nevertheless thought that the lorry movements were inappropriate. It rightly reflected the concerns of the local community.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

The right hon. Gentleman is making an excellent speech. Traffic is a concern not only at drilling sites: the Knostrop treatment works in Leeds is one of only three places licensed to treat fracking waste water, which would discharge into the River Aire. There is concern there about not only traffic movement, but discharge into local rivers. There is an issue not just at drilling sites but also at treatment works.

[Nick Herbert]

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point. There are, of course, wider environmental objections; those might be addressed separately by suitable, strong regulation. My concern is whether it is appropriate for exploratory drilling and potential subsequent extraction of shale gas to be allowed by permitted development. I do not oppose permitted development rights in principle; it is sometimes appropriate for such rights to be applied. I support the application of those rights for the conversion of office buildings to residential premises because that has produced a large amount of housing that would not have been available otherwise.

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

The 2017 Conservative party manifesto that Conservative Members stood on spoke about a revolution in shale gas and liberalising the planning regime.

[Nick Herbert]

The hon. Gentleman is right. We stood on many other manifesto proposals that have not seen the light of day. I gently suggest to the Minister, my good friend and near neighbour, that this is one proposal that it would be wise to keep firmly locked away in the bottom drawer. It would not be wise to allow that activity to come under the permitted rights regime, and that would not be an appropriate use of that planning procedure. It is appropriate for local authorities to be able to assess the impact of traffic movements and so on an activity in their area. Conditions can be put on permitted development, but that is not the same as having it looked at by the local authority.

All such issues are a question of balance, but I have discovered, in 14 years as the Member of Parliament for my beautiful constituency, that there is no non-controversial way to generate energy in our country. Yes, we all want more solar, but large-scale solar panels in beautiful countryside can excite just as much opposition as drilling. The question is whether activity is located appropriately. Some of the proposals that have been made in my constituency have been for inappropriate locations and the impact on local communities has not been thought through. Others are uncontroversial because they have been located more sensibly.

I do not have an in-principle objection to the extraction of oil or gas and I am not entering into the debate about the merits of fracking in particular. It is likely that there will only be oil, not gas, in my part of West Sussex in any case—although I may be wrong about that. I know that there is concern about the potential, random industrialisation of the countryside. We cannot allow that to happen through one tick in a ministerial box, and then find that we have no control over it subsequently except in protected areas of national parks. Local authorities have to have the ability to take a view about the impact of, for example, traffic movements, to decide whether levels are appropriate and, potentially, to impose conditions. That is why we should retain the existing planning regime for this activity, and why I would strongly suggest to the Minister that this is not a proportionate or sensible policy that he should pursue.