Fury at government after council overruled on Surrey Hills gas drilling

theguardian.com:

Campaigners and the Liberal Democrats have criticised the government after a minister overruled a Tory-run council to approve gas drilling on the edge of the Surrey Hills, despite accepting the scheme would cause harm to the natural landscape.

The decision, formally announced in a written statement by the housing minister Stuart Andrew, gives the green light to three years of exploratory drilling at a site near the edge of the Surrey Hills area of outstanding natural beauty (AONB).

The site is in the South West Surrey constituency of Jeremy Hunt, the former health secretary, who strongly opposes the project.

Campaigners said the decision showed an “obsession” with finding new fossil fuel developments, and that it would be likely to provoke protests.

The plan was rejected by Surrey county council, but a subsequent public inquiry recommended it should go ahead, a decision which was then assessed by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, which approved it.

It means the energy company UK Oil and Gas will be allowed to operate a non-fracking gas well near Dunsfold, south of Guildford, close to the boundary of the AONB, with permission for a new road junction, access route and fence around the boundary.

The decision – made by Andrew after Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, recused himself because his constituency is in a nearby part of Surrey – accepted the drilling would involve “a significant level of landscape and visual impacts from the proposal”, including the loss of hedgerows, something mitigated by the finite period of operation.

Noting that allowing the project contravened Surrey’s own guidance, the decision also conceded it had “not been demonstrated that the site has been selected to minimise