THE reportage “Council says no to fracking” (Gazette & Herald, March 4) was excellent as has been most of your news and letters concerning fracking over the last six months.

But there was one inaccuracy, Oswaldkirk is a parish meeting not a parish council. This is because our parish has too few residents to warrant a parish council.

However, we do have the flexibility to call meetings of the whole parish at short notice. The special meeting reported was such an occasion. It was held to debate the issue of fracking, which has the potential to make the biggest visible and lasting change to the region since the last ice age. We voted with a resounding NO to fracking in Ryedale.

Parish councils and parish meetings in Ryedale are urged to call meetings on the fracking issue to enable voters to make their views known to prospective candidates in the local and national elections in May.

David Badham, chairman Oswaldkirk Parish

 

•  Meeting In answer to Councillor Janet Sanderson’s letter on the fracking debate, I am a retired local government solicitor and I did not accept the council solicitor’s advice at the meeting. My opinion has not changed.

In order to avoid legal arguments which will bore most readers, I would simply point out that councils such as City of York Council have succeeded in passing anti-fracking motions, presumably without fear of the dire legal consequences we were warned about.

The council solicitor’s main point was that the proposed motion amounted to a “blanket” policy prohibition. Even if he was correct, his advice could have been satisfied by a different form of words than the amendment which Councillor Sanderson’s Conservative Group voted through.

The original motion says: “Ryedale District Council completely opposes all Fracking in Ryedale”.

This could have been amended by adding the words “in principle” at the end of the motion or of substituting the word “generally” for the word “completely” and deleting the word “all”, so the motion, as amended, could have read: “Ryedale District Council opposes all Fracking in Ryedale in principle” or “Ryedale District Council generally opposes Fracking in Ryedale”.

These were simple amendments which would have maintained an anti-fracking position without amounting to a blanket policy prohibition. Instead, the Conservative Group forced through an amendment with the following key sentence: “The council will only support applications for fracking or exploration preparatory to fracking if it is satisfied that public concerns about the potential damage to the environment have been resolved satisfactorily.”

The word “only” in their amendment is a double negative in the context, and has little significance. It is a kind of sleight of hand. All it does is make the amended motion masquerade as something which it is not.

The Conservative amendment, in essence, supports the principle of fracking subject to compliance with some conditions. It is not very (if at all) different from national policy.

So Ryedale can now be counted among the districts which are firmly pro-fracking.

Councillor Sanderson says she was concerned about how her position on the county council’s planning committee might have been compromised if she had voted for the original resolution. If that was her view, she could have abstained. She did not have to oppose it.

The Conservative Party used to be considered the party of the countryside. Sadly we now know, from their policies on fracking, that this is no longer the case. They are only interested in big business and the south-east. Their local council group lost its right to be trusted and taken seriously a long time ago.

Councillor Paul Andrews, Malton Ward