The government has overturned Lancashire county council’s rejection of a fracking site, paving the way for shale company Cuadrilla to drill in the county next year.
There has been drawing outrage from local groups, environmentalists and politicians.
The council cited visual impact and noise when it turned down the company’s two planning applications to frack on the Fylde last year, but a month later Cuadrilla submitted an appeal.
On Thursday, the communities secretary, Savid Javid, said he had accepted the appeal for one of the sites, at Preston New Road.
The move marks a major step up in the scale of exploratory fracking in the UK, as it green lights four wells compared to the single well approved for fracking in North Yorkshire earlier this year.
The consequences of fracking
Only one shale gas well near Blackpool, in Lancashire, has so far been fracked in Britain, but was later abandoned when some of the work undertaken triggered an earth tremor.
That resulted in an 18 month ban on the hydraulic fracturing technology used to extract gas from shale rock.
Some farmers have been critical of fracking and the direct consequences of the activity on nearby farms.
A North Yorkshire farmer has spoken of her fear of pollution after a local authority gave the go-ahead for fracking operations in the UK for the first time in five years.
She told FarmingUK that her cattle were reliant on water from a borehole, which she feared could be contaminated by the fracking operations.
The farmer said that evidence was emerging from the United States, where fracking has been used for some years, that water sources had been polluted.
