38 Degrees members and fracking in Lancashire

In February, Lancashire County Council seemed set to vote against fracking in the county, but pressure from dirty energy giant Cuadrilla forced them to delay the vote until the end of April.

38 Degrees members in Lancashire voted to keep the pressure up on councillors and Cuadrilla – making sure councillors held fast and voted against fracking on April 30th. Well this week, unfortunately, the council pushed the decision back again to the 30th June.

It’s disappointing that 38 Degrees members in Lancashire will have to wait even longer to find out whether or not Cuadrilla will be given permission to tear up the countryside. But over the last couple of months 38 Degrees members have come together with local grassroots organisations in Lancashire to show how much public opposition there is to fracking.

In the last few months 38 Degrees members have sent over 4100 emails to councillors asking them to vote against fracking. We sent over 800 letters to local papers, getting public opposition to fracking in the news. We handed in a petition to the council signed by 6900 members of the public in Lancashire. And we got 25,000 posters up in windows across Lancashire, making sure that wherever councillors went they saw public opposition to fracking.

And that’s not all! 38 Degrees members across the UK stood with Lancashire – 90,000 members signed a national petition standing in solidarity with the county. And thousands of members from across the country chipped in to get ads in local papers in the week before the council’s consultation on fracking plans closed.

Lancashire is a front line battle in the fight to stop fracking – if we can stop it here it’ll be a blow to the fracking industry. So it’s frustrating that, despite everything we’ve been doing together, the council have pushed the decision back further. But together we can keep the pressure up and make sure that, come June 30th, councillors in Lancashire vote against Cuadrilla’s plans once and for all.