News | Crime I would like to be emailed about offers, event and updates from Evening Standard. Read our privacy notice . The decision to approve an oilfield in the Lincolnshire Wolds, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), was unlawful, the High Court has heard.
Campaign group SOS Biscathorpe is bringing legal action against the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities over the decision to permit exploratory oil drilling and production at the site in Biscathorpe. The group’s barrister, Estelle Dehon KC, told the High Court in London that major development in AONBs is permitted only in “exceptional circumstances” and must be “in the public interest”, and that the planning inspector had failed to consider both of these issues together. There is no case for new fossil fuel exploration anywhere but to consider it in an AONB in proximity to such rare and precious chalk streams is utterly unthinkable especially in a climate and nature crisis Mathilda Dennis, SOS Biscathorpe Ms Dehon said on Wednesday that the inspector did not factor in renewable energy sources as an alternative to drilling for oil, which amounted to an unlawful error.
She argued he had wrongly and “irrationally” put “great weight” on the “minuscule part” that extracted oil from the site would play in the UK’s energy security. She added that his report stated that the total amount of oil expected to be recovered from the site over the production period would “amount to on.
