A swathe of fracking licences across the country is the result.
Could this move drastically impact housing plans in ‘Your Waverley’?
Not least the controversial HS2 route through Warwicks, Staffords and Cheshire. #Dunsfold is going to be busy @Williamweb1
All those nice new houses at the Dunsfold Park Garden Village and one of the largest gipsy sites in the country with fracking going on right underneath them as farmer Ashley Ward prepares to welcome UK Oil & Gas into his back garden next door?
Apparently, Dunsfold Parish Council knew about the proposal a week or so before we, and the community, heard about it, but decided it didn’t warrant further attention!!!
However, John Grey, the Parish and WBC Councillor realised this was a serious matter and needed attention. He alerted Waverley, submitted questions to UKOG and turned up at the public meeting last Sunday.
However, Dunsfold Parish Councillor Stephen Haines did turn up for the public meeting. One of the guys pictured next to the serving hatch we believe?
Dunsfold doesn’t normally get 120 or so people turning out on a Sunday to meetings so it looks like the parish pump wallers may now be taking things seriously?
They obviously don’t want oil wells, as well as thousands of homes in their backyards? No doubt all the usual parish councils will be working with Protect Our Waverley, and Crystal Tips Weddell will be collecting shedloads more taxpayers’ cash to fund the fight? Just to recap – last time she collected £276,000 to fight off development at Dunsfold Aerodrome- so that £50,000 VAT could be reclaimed and paid out to lawyers to fight ‘Your Waverley who gives them the Precept, to help them to do so!
Go girl go?
Residents heard UK Oil and Gas outline its plans to drill for oil near Dunsfold village at the aptly named site – PRATTS CORNER?However, opponents of oil exploration across southern England stirred up the locals to challenge the company about its plans in the village.
Environmentalist, Nicola Peel, who campaigned against UKOG’s operation at Broadford Bridge, told the audience:
“You need to ask UKOG very specific questions.”
John Gray, the village’s representative on Waverley Borough Council, said:
“It is very much down to people of Dunsfold to get themselves organised”.
Well – he should know a thing or two about that! He has been working, behind the scenes, with the ProtectOr Waverley Group – who together with the CPRE have been opposing development in Dunsfold for years, at huge cost to the very same borough council of which he is a member!
Julian Neal, a member of Markwells Wood Watch, said villagers should lobby their MPs and councillors. He said the Conservative MP, Penny Mordant, had supported his group’s campaign against UKOG’s proposals at Markwells Wood:
“I was able to convince Penny Mordant in a hour-and-a-half meeting of the environmental and public health dangers of the Markwells Wood proposals.”
The first indication of UKOG’s plans for Dunsfold emerged just over a week ago when letters were distributed in the village on 15 February 2019. (DrillOrDrop
UKOG said it was looking at a site northeast of the village. It did not identify the exact location but residents described the site as Pratt’s Corner.
A Don’t Drill Dunsfold Facebook page was established within hours of the UKOG letters being distributed and Sunday’s meeting was organised days later. The venue changed to a larger room because too many people wanted to attend.
UKOG issued a press statement last week to address questions it said it was being asked about the plans for Dunsfold.
The company’s chief executive, Stephen Sanderson, said he hoped to “fully engage”with residents. He accused, what he described as, “well-known and ill-informed scaremongers” of “circulating fiction” about the company’s plans for exploratory drilling in Dunsfold.
WW has ascertained from local records that similar Drilling took place in Alfold in the 1990s and although there was a public outcry, exploratory drilling went ahead near the village school. It took a matter of weeks, gas was found – there was no disruption or nuisance, but no further drilling took place.