PRESS RELEASE: 01st January 2015

Preston New Road Action Group is heading into the New Year with an unwavering promise to defend Cuadrilla’s appeal for the monitoring and fracking explorations at the Plumpton site, with a compelling new focus.

While Chair of the group, Pat Davies, was decorating her house for Christmas, she found her ornamental sign with “This House Believes” engraved on it, and it inspired the group to use the phrase to refocus and take their campaign through to the appeal stage and beyond.

Pat said: “We’re not campaigners; we’re only residents, in particular, ones who haven’t protested before. We have fought a David and Goliath battle to inform our parish, our borough council, and finally Lancashire County Council. Largely self-funding, we have absolutely nothing to gain unlike many people who are pro this industry. They see themselves profiting from fracking at locals’ expense. We are merely guardians of our community. Having studied this application in minute detail for two years, it’s laughable when often non-local people looking for profit at this community’s expense try to dismiss us as either ill-informed or a minority: we are neither. We believe people come before profit.”

Media spokesperson, Claire Stephenson, stated: “After such a busy year devoting so much time, energy and emotion to this campaign, we felt we need a positive new focus. We’ve had a strong strategy from day one. The Conservative government is intent on destroying any chance of meeting its recent climate change obligations. Their methodical destruction of the solar and onshore wind renewable energy industry can only be described as irrational and blinkered, all the while championing yet more dangerous fossil fuel extraction that scientific studies prove beyond a doubt, we need to keep in the ground.

After a turbulent year, residents have remained stoic and hardy through whatever the industry has thrown at them. They say the lack of respect and democracy for local communities, especially in the light of the heavy peer-review evidence towards hydraulic fracturing, is quite astonishing.

Claire adds: “By using a simple idea and a dedicated hashtag #webelieve on social media, we can draw together support across the UK from communities who will be affected by fracking without their consent. This is now a large human rights issue. We have to remain committed to the belief of a fair, democratic society and that it should be our local elected representatives only who have the power to determine Lancashire’s future.”

ENDS