Nottinghamshire Minerals Local Plan Publication Version

This view has been unanimously approved by the Neighbourhood Forum Managing Committee and confirmed by a meeting of Forum members. For more information see: http://www.tssneighbourhoodplan.org/ and http://www.tssneighbourhoodplan.org/Climate-Change/
Our Neighbourhood Forum believes that this plan is not ‘sound’.
1. This view has been formed because the plan has failed to consider the alternative of a separate fracking policy and a failure to comply with current national policy on climate change.
2. We in Teversal, Skegby and Stanton Hill live in a former industrial landscape with four coal mines and related railways working up to the 1990s. This has been transformed through trails and forest parks into a beautiful environment and we now have a growing tourism industry. The Minerals Plan should oppose the re-industrialisation of the landscape with: lorry movements, toxic gas haze, groundwater contamination, increased accident risk, occupational hazards, horizontal drilling – requiring a 3-D site boundary and complex mapping of fault lines, need for large amounts of water for fracking, need to dispose of toxic flowback water, need for a precautionary approach to protect groundwater – particularly the Sherwood Sandstone Aquifer, toxic air emissions, mapping to protect groundwater sources and sensitive sites, methane leaks making greenhouse gas emissions greater than for coal overall, seismic activity, particularly in former coalfield areas, difficulties of regulation due to scale, damage to farming and tourism.
We believe that fracking will not bring the price of gas down (latest research from the BGS suggests very limited reserves), it will provide very few local jobs, while destroying amenity based tourism jobs and businesses, it has ignored evidence of seriously destructive impacts to the health of local people, farm animals, wildlife, local economy, climate and local environment – which cannot be regulated away. We hope and trust you will take our carefully thought out and researched submission seriously.
1. We believe that Notts CC should consider that North Yorkshire’s Draft Minerals and Waste Plan includes a number of protections for fracking proposals: defining hydraulic fracturing as any fracturing which allows gas to flow; a separation distance of 500m from homes; setting a maximum density of well pads; requiring a financial guarantee in case fracking companies go bust before cleaning up a site.
2. The Cumbria Minerals and Waste Plan requires any commercial exploitation of hydrocarbons to contribute to “mitigation of climate change”; the Kirklees Local Plan requires any production of hydrocarbons to have “net zero impact on climate change”. An objective of our Neighbourhood Forum is to pursue policies and objectives that reduce the Neighbourhood’s carbon emissions to a verifiably sustainable level. We urge Nottinghamshire County Council to adopt a similar objective within the Minerals Plan.
3. Fracking seismology expert Professor Peter Styles recommended 500m separation from former mine workings and 850m from any fault lines (supported by Bassetlaw MP John Mann – EDM#1303, May 2018). This recommendation should be incorporated in the Minerals Plan.
4. We also would like to raise an issue ignored in the previous consultation: a legal requirement for Plan policies to reduce climate emissions (Planning & Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, s19(1A)).