At times, it can be incredibly frustrating to be a local councillor. When you are one voice among 90 Councillors trying to influence policy set by a ruling group you aren’t part of, it often feels as though you are shut out of all meaningful decision-making. It is easy to become demoralised and conclude that it was scarcely worth the time and trouble you took to stand for election and win.
Then something happens that makes a decade of work worthwhile in a single afternoon.
That is certainly the way I felt when I put forward a motion to oppose plans for a gas drilling rig close to the delightful village of Burniston, near Scarborough, using a form of temporary fracking known as proppant squeeze. I had expected the vote to be close. Instead, the proposed plan was rejected outright, with not a single councillor from any of the four political parties represented on the committee voting against the motion.
The work behind the decision
Two kinds of hard work lay behind this important decision on a nationally controversial project. The first was the hours spent in planning committee meetings and reading national and local policy documents to ensure that I understood the rules and could make a judgement based on them rather than on pre-formed opinions.
It is never enough to attend a planning committee and simply say that something feels wrong. Decisions cannot be based on emotionally expressed opinions. If they are, the developer will, rightly, win on appeal, and may secure substantial compensation from the council. Decisions grounded in evidence and policy, by contrast, are far more likely to stand firm under scrutiny.
A mountain of evidence
In the case of the Burniston application, anyone trying to make a fair and reasoned judgement needed to wade through a vast quantity of documents. There were over 1,000 objections, many of them technical and complex, alongside a series of lengthy expert analyses submitted by the applicant, reports from the council’s own experts, a planning officer’s summary report exceeding 100 pages, a detailed minerals and waste policy document, and page after page of relevant national planning policy. Reading through that material and identifying important issues took many hours.
Why the application failed
After reviewing the evidence and listening to four hours of presentations and questioning, it became clear to councillors on the planning committee that the application breached several key policies.
The most important reason for rejection was that the application involved significant industrial development on a heritage coastline intended to be protected from such intrusion. A previous application to erect two wind turbines on the same land had been rejected only a few years earlier because it was deemed an unreasonable industrialisation of a sensitive environment. This new proposal involved a 38-metre-high drilling rig (nearly 20 times your height!), a 12-metre flare stack, and a series of other constructions associated with the extraction.
A second concern about the drilling was its proximity to homes, one of which lay just 320 metres away. Council policy requires robust evidence that residents living within 500 metres face no unacceptable risk of harm. While some mitigation was proposed, other risks could not be mitigated, nor controlled through planning conditions. The elected members took the view that this was not acceptable, given the number of affected properties.
There were also concerns that the 38-metre drilling rig and the 12-metre-high flare stack were both within a few hundred metres of the North York Moors National Park, an area recognised for its dark skies. The argument that this would be only a temporary problem failed to persuade any member of the planning committee.
Economic claims unconvincing
Councillors were similarly sceptical of claims that the development would deliver meaningful economic benefits to the area. It was pointed out that most of the skilled workers needed would not be drawn from local unemployed people.
By contrast, substantial evidence was presented that local people felt there were serious downsides, particularly for the local tourist economy. A popular national cycle route lies only 200 metres from the site, while the prescribed limit for visual intrusion is four kilometres.
Cross-party cooperation
Faced with such compelling evidence, councillors felt they had no option other than to reject the scheme. Every one of the councillors present has a record of voting for some developments and against others. None of them felt this development was acceptable and complied with policies.
That leads to the second form of hard work behind this outcome: collaboration. Behind the scenes, in endless boring committee meetings, sensible councillors from across the political spectrum discovered that a shared commitment to the interests of the local community outweighed political differences. Building trust, and sometimes unlikely alliances, takes time and patience. But that trust pays off when it really matters.
Councillors from the Green Party, Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats were able to work together under significant pressure to make a balanced and fair judgement based firmly on policy. There was a shared view about what was in the best interest of the community we were elected to represent, and of whether this application met the policy tests.
The fight may not be over
I would like to say that the decision by elected representatives to approve or reject an application is the end of the process. Unfortunately, it is not.
If an application is approved, local residents have no right of appeal. If it is rejected, the developer does. In this case, there is also a possibility that the Secretary of State could call for the application to undergo a screening process, leading to fresh consideration by the planning committee based on further evidence.
Why local democracy matters
Nevertheless, this felt like one of those occasions when being a local councillor was genuinely worthwhile. There was cross-party agreement that something was wrong, and a clear consensus that the evidence showed unacceptable harm to tourist and residential locations on the outskirts of Scarborough. Local people were able to rely on their local councillors to come together, listen objectively to evidence and protect them from an unreasonable development.
Readers may be aware that there is heavy lobbying to remove the power of local councillors to decide what is in the best interest of local people. Central government appears to think that local democracy is a bit of a nuisance, preferring growth at speed regardless of the consequences.
I disagree.
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