Today some members of the Preston New Road Action Group, the residents living within a few hundred metres of the frack site, met with the government appointed Shale Gas Commissioner Natascha Engel. It was clearly understood (and admitted) that she is not impartial.

She was given a pack of information to take away with her which was fronted by a letter (link below) which was used to drive the main discussions of the meeting. In addition:

• We introduced ourselves giving our professional backgrounds to show her that we are an educated professional group of people
• We explained that we have done much research into fracking which has enabled us to come to our informed stance of opposing it anywhere.
• She is prepared to come back to further meetings, we asked if she would be prepared to attend a public meeting if one were to be organised, she said she would if that is what we want, but feels that smaller meetings are more productive
• We discussed her letter to the press which she was clearly embarrassed about. We had quite a lively discussion about the letter
• We asked her to clarify her role; her role is meet with communities and feed back their concerns to government, fracking companies and regulators
• We also discussed the fact that fracking is not going to create a massive increase in jobs

 We feel that she has been clearly informed of our views, and has been left in no doubt about our opposition to fracking anywhere.

Link to the Shale Commissioner Briefing.