Resident's anger at 'skewed' fracking inquiry decision

Jules Burton has been left with a £2,055 legal bill after a failed bid for a judicial review into Communities Secretary Sajid Javid’s decision to re-open the inquiry into Cuadrilla’s refused bid to frack at Roaseacre Wood.

He said he was “appalled” the inquiry was to go ahead and that previous evidence, which convinced the previous planning inspector to refuse Cuadrilla’s bid on road safety grounds, was to be ruled out.

He claimed it was unfair residents would now face huge bills to fight on.

He said: “I find this decision not merely questionable but worrying in the extreme. To ensure that these decision letters reached me over Easter can, I feel, best be described as fortuitous for both Sajid Javid and Cuadrilla.

“As if this decision to re-open the Inquiry was not in itself sufficiently surprising, the list of restrictions imposed by the Secretary of State must surely call into question the impartiality he has sworn to uphold and exercise in the execution of his office.

“Sadly, it would appear that what many previously believed was an over-exaggeration by those opposing fracking is being proved only too true. British 'democracy' has been replaced by a wholly autocratic dictatorship.

“The Roseacre Wood application was refused by the Parish Council, refused by the Borough Council, refused by the County Council and refused by an independent Planning Inspector.

"For one man to skew the planning process and to overrule all those decisions without so much as looking at the site, declaring that he knows better than all the experts put together, renders the democratic decision process to nothing more than window dressing.”