THE North York Moors National Park and its surrounding area will become one of the country’s most highly protected areas from fracking with the adoption of a planning blueprint, it has emerged.
National park bosses have detailed for the first time how the incoming Minerals and Waste Plan blueprint for North Yorkshire until 2030 features several new safeguards for the protected landscape, homes and the surrounding area.
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The statements follows numerous opposition councillors at Conservative-run North Yorkshire County Council objecting to the plan after it emerged it left the door open to fracking developments in some parts of the county where energy firms already have licences to explore for shale gas.
A meeting of the North York Moors National Park Authority saw members approve adopting the joint plan with North Yorkshire and York councils after hearing it would be the country’s only such blueprint which prevented fracking firms from side-stepping around the “ambigious” national definition of hydraulic fracturing.
The authority’s director of planning Chris France said while the government had temporarily banned fracking, the moratorium only applied to the legal definition of fracking, meaning firms using a certain volume of liquid can still frack or stimulate rock strata without breaking the ban.
He said the new minerals plan defined fracking as using any volume of liquid.
Mr France said: “Fracking is fracking. We believe it is the only minerals plan in the country that has got that wider definition of fracking.”
The meeting heard the park and its surrounding area would also be protected from “a ring of steel” being built around it to enable fracking firms to laterally frack underneath the park.
Mr France said the minerals plan meant firms wanting to laterally frack underneath the park would need to demonstrate that process was not harming the protected area.
He added: “If they went into production through lateral fracking that would be regarded as major development and there is an assumption major development does not happen in protected landscapes.”
The meeting heard the park would also be protected by a 3.5km visual sensitivity zone, that homes in that zone would have a 500m buffer area from fracking sites and the plan reintroduced the major development test whereby developers must justify there is a national need for minerals.
Members were told during the plan’s development there had been “a great falling out” between the shale gas and potash industries over potential locations under the park, but because potash was considered a nationally important mineral nationally they would be protected from being sterilised by any surface or other minerals development.
The authority’s planning chairman, David Hugill, the said minerals plan provided “layers of protection” from fracking for the national park.
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He said: “We can’t frack at the moment, but if fracking ever did come back we are protected.”
Jim Bailey, the authority’s chairman, said: “The triumph of this plan is that it does properly protect the hierachy of protected landscapes of the national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty as they are set out in the major development test.
"It sorts out the ambiguities about the definitions of fracking on national legislation. If you say fracking is banned, fracking shouldn’t mostly be banned.
“To me under the national park is still the national park, but this plan takes away that debate.
"It means that people get the protection from the national park and AONB that they properly expect.”
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