The decision on plans to produce oil in the Lincolnshire Wolds has been delayed again.

A hearing about whether Egdon Resources should be allowed to extract oil from the Biscathorpe site near Louth could now be put back until autumn/winter 2025 or beyond.

This the third time the Biscathorpe decision process has been held up this year.

Two of the delays have been because of inadequate information provided by Egdon Resources and one because the company failed to meet a deadline.

The latest pause is yet another twist in a long and confusing planning battle, dating back more than a decade. (See Background section for more information)

In the past four years, it has involved the company, local opponents, Lincolnshire County Council and the Planning Inspectorate.

Egdon is currently appealing against a refusal of planning permission for long-term production and an extra well at Biscathorpe.

The Planning Inspectorate, which deals with appeals, said today that additional information requested from the company earlier this year had “elements that were not adequate”.

The company has now been asked to submit revised information by Friday 8 August 2025.

Consultation controversy

Today’s news has interrupted a public consultation, which had been due to finish in12 days.

This was on the additional information requested by the Planning Inspectorate five months ago.

Local people have been critical of the way this consultation had been organised. There were complaints that:

• Publicity about the appeal was left to Egdon Resources
• No official notices were posted at the site entrance
• A notice was placed with a newspaper group which did not cover Biscathorpe
• People who had previously commented on Egdon’s proposal were not informed about the consultation
• Appeal documents are published on Lincolnshire County Council’s online planning portal but comments had to be submitted to the Planning Inspectorate’s website
• Information about how to comment were in an online document titled Press Notice – June 2025, at the bottom of a list of 54 other documents
• An online document titled Planning Inspectorate contact details for submission of comments” related to a previous consultation and had a wrong email address

A new public consultation on the revised information is expected to begin at the end of August or early September and could run until early October 2025.

Today, the planning inspector set out what was expected from this next consultation. He said it would require:

“a newspaper notice, site notices and notification letters to statutory consultees, parish councils, neighbours, and any party who has commented on this appeal at any stage”.

The new consultation would run for no less than 30 days, the inspector said.

He added:

“This notification and consultation will be the ‘final’ one, after which I would wish to proceed to the next stage.” 

Background

Egdon Resources first applied to explore for oil at Biscathorpe in 2015. It drilled a well in 2019.

In 2021, the company sought permission for another well, testing and 15 years of production. That application was refused and this is the company’s second appeal against that decision.

The first appeal, lodged in 2022, was successful and planning permission was granted. But the consent was quashed following the Supreme Court’s landmark ‘Finch’ ruling on climate emissions in 2024. The permission was judged to have been unlawful because it had not taken into account the greenhouse gas emissions from burning any oil produced at Biscathorpe.

Egdon appealed again, this time including the first assessment of the climate impact of onshore oil in the UK. The assessment was criticised by opponents. At the time, a hearing had been expected in the spring 2025.

But in February 2025, the Planning Inspectorate asked Egdon for more information. The company failed to provide the information by the first deadline of May 2025 and was given another month.

It met the second deadline, of 23 June 2025. But the Planning Inspectorate was not satisfied with the information, leading to today’s announcements.

DrillOrDrop will continue to follow the progress of the Biscathorpe appeal.

Company comment

DrillOrDrop asked Egdon Resources to comment on the cancelled consultation.

A spokesperson for the company said the Planning Inspectorate had asked Egdon to undertake the “publicity/consultation requirements”:

“Following discussions Egdon agreed to undertake publicity on behalf of the Planning Inspectorate. The notice was published in the South East Lincolnshire Target newspaper on 18^th June. The publisher, Trinity Mirror, confirmed in writing that the newspaper is circulated in the Louth area. Egdon also sent both the notice, and a link to the further information, to a list of statutory consultees provided by LCC.

The spokesperson added that regulations do not require a notice to be displayed at the site in these circumstances:

“The Planning Inspectorate have confirmed that the Regulations do not specify that third parties need to be sent copies of the further information.”

Updated 17/7/25 with company comment