6.1    The County and City Councils have undertaken earlier stages of community engagement and it is now an ideal opportunity to review the messages which emerged from those stages and to assess their relevance at the present time in light of subsequent changes in Government policy and guidance.

6.2   Stakeholder Workshop 2009

We held a stakeholder workshop in 2009, which scoped the issues that the Minerals Local Plan should address.   At this event, people recognised and identified the need for mineral extraction, provided that its social and environmental impact is minimised.  

6.3    Issues and Options exercise

The issues identified for hydrocarbon minerals in this exercise were Issue 10, ‘managing how we make provision for conventional oil and gas’, and Issue 11, ‘managing how we make provision for new coal exploitation technologies’. The ‘Suggested Approach’ for Issue 10 was to include a policy for oil and gas developments from conventional sources which sets out criteria similar to those in the existing Minerals Local Plan (policies MP13 and MP35). For Issue 11 the ‘Suggested Approach’ was to include a policy for new coal exploitation technologies which sets out criteria similar to those for conventional oil and gas developments in Policy MP35 of the existing Minerals Local Plan. It did not specifically address the issue of hydraulic fracturing which was then a new issue and with little known relevance to Derbyshire and Derby.

There was agreement from all the respondents to the Issues and Options consultation who answered this question that a criterion based policy would be the most appropriate way of dealing with the future working of hydrocarbons. No other possible options for dealing with the issue were suggested by the respondents.

6.4   Sustainability Appraisal

The Interim Sustainability Appraisal20 found that for both of the approaches identified in the Issues and Options exercise was that they would have a similar affect to the current Minerals Local Plan and therefore impacts on the baseline would be negligible. It also concluded that the policies would be inherently positive as they would help to minimise the environmental effects of both forms of extraction. It also concluded that allowing both oil and gas and coal extraction is inherently negative in terms of the greenhouse gas emissions combustion that these fuels would have, however, these are not something that the Plan should control.

 ²⁰ Sustainability Appraisal (SA) of the Minerals Issues and Options Paper (2010), Interim SA Report, July 2013, URS.