Friends of the Earth granted judicial review it hopes will help alter planning rules

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Ministers face a pair of legal challenges to their planning rules on fracking this week, from a national environmental group and the son of fashion designer Vivienne Westwood.

The government used its revamped planning rulebook to tell local authorities in July that they should recognise the benefits of shale gas and facilitate its extraction.

Business secretary Greg Clark also proposed removing the need for exploratory wells to get planning permission, to speed shale projects through the planning system.

Q&A What is fracking? Show Hide Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is a way of extracting natural gas from shale rock formations that are often deep underground. It involves pumping water, chemicals and usually sand underground at high pressure to fracture shale – hence the name – and release the gas trapped within to be collected back at the surface. The technology has transformed the US energy landscape in the last decade, owing to the combination of high-volume fracking – 1.5m gallons of water per well, on average – and the relatively modern ability to drill horizontally into shale after a vertical well has been drilled. In England, the government placed a moratorium on fracking in November 2019 after protests, legal challenges and planning rejections. A year earlier, the energy company Cuadrilla was forced to stop work at its Preston New Road site in Lancashire twice in four days due to minor earthquakes occurring while it was fracking. The tremors breached a seismic threshold imposed after fracking caused minor earthquakes at a nearby Cuadrilla site in 2011. In March 2019 the high court ruled that the government's fracking guidelines were unlawful because they had failed to sufficiently consider scientific evidence against fracking.

The high court will first hear a challenge from Friends of the Earth, which the group hopes will force the government to change its planning policy.

The case hinges on whether ministers and officials unlawfully failed to assess the change’s environmental impact.

Fracking paused in Blackpool after biggest tremor to date Read more

Will Rundle, the group’s head of legal, said: “The government’s national planning framework, which directs development in every single community in England, has never been environmentally assessed. This makes a mockery of the government’s green credentials and undermines sustainable development.”

The court will also hear an application for a legal challenge against the new planning regime from Joe Corré, the founder of lingerie company Agent Provocateur.

He said: “So desperate are they [the government] to make fracking easier for their friends in the fossil fuel industry – they have have tried to bypass local government objection, scientific facts and the will of the people.”

The entrepreneur argued that the science has moved on since a 2013 official report that has been the basis for the government arguing shale gas can act as a “bridge” in the transition to renewable energy.

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The first exploratory fracking in seven years is underway at a site near Blackpool and due to finish later this month.

But shale gas companies have found themselves bogged down in planning battles and delays with local authorities, prompting repeated efforts from the government to ease projects through the planning system.

The two legal challenges will be heard between Tuesday and Thursday.

The communities department said: “It would not be appropriate to comment on an ongoing legal challenge.”