Shale Gas Development
Debate between Matt Western and Mark Menzies(6 years ago)
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Mark Menzies
I will touch on that further. The situation in Lancashire, particularly with Preston New Road, was slightly more nuanced than that. Officers recommended approval but councillors voted against. The issue is that we are kidding ourselves if we think that those decisions are being taken locally. Overwhelmingly, they are not. They end up being called in by the Planning Inspectorate, and for some of these sites, there is more than one planning inquiry that runs on at enormous expense and is incredibly complicated. The decision is then taken out of local people’s hands. The situation at the moment is fully flawed.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for securing the debate. That is the very heart of it. We have heard evidence in the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee about the arguments for addressing that, picking it up as a piece of national infrastructure and treating it the same, but are we not denuding our local democracy in that process? We try to respect our democracy here, and it is so important, particularly in the current climate, that people are heard locally.