INEOS Response to The Guardian article 8th January 2018
We were surprised to read today’s article in the Guardian, Ineos 'misled' public over fracking in Sherwood Forest, by Adam Vaughan as last week we clearly confirmed and sent evidence to the newspaper that we have no plans to access SSSI areas for the purposes of the survey being carried out in the East Midlands.
We have made a clear commitment to Nottinghamshire County Council (NCC) as part of our planning documentation, which we submitted prior to carrying out our survey programme in the area.
As is normal practice, before our submission to Nottinghamshire County Council we contacted all landowners in the survey area for their permission. This included the Forestry Commission, who provided us access to their land, including some SSSIs. However, we subsequently made the commitment ‘not to survey any SSSIs in the area’, as evidenced in the planning documentation submitted to NCC, months after our correspondence with land owners.
As made clear to the Guardian, the NCC planning documentation, that is legally binding and publically available, takes precedence over any land access agreement. These public documents, including the exemptions are all easily accessible and a simple phone call to a planning officer by a Guardian journalist would have confirmed this was the case.
It would appear that it is Friends of the Earth yet again attempting to mislead the public rather than accepting our numerous offers to meet and talk about the facts.