Officials in Lancashire are recommending refusal of a bid to extend the life of the mothballed Preston New Road fracking site near Blackpool.

The site operator, Cuadrilla, failed to return the site to farmland by June 2025 under the terms of a previous planning permission.

The company sought a further extension until 30 June 2027 in a new application, due to be decided by Lancashire County Council next week.

But planning officers said in a report published this afternoon:

“The proposed extension of time for the retention of the site in its current form would result in unnecessary and unacceptable harm to the rural character of the area.

“The proposed variation would conflict with the original intention and purpose of the condition, which was imposed to ensure the lifetime of the development was strictly controlled and that the land would be restored to its former condition within the approved timescale.

“The proposed amendment would not secure the restoration of the site at the earliest opportunity”.

The planners said the extension would breach national and local planning policies.

Cuadrilla said it needed another year for groundwater monitoring in order to surrender one of its environmental permits. It said it also needed extra time to restore the site to pasture.

This was the company’s second attempt to get more time for restoration. If the county council’s planning committee votes against the extension, it would be the first planning refusal for Preston New Road in a decade.

The planners said there were 60 public letters against a further extension, along with a strong objection to the proposal from the local parish council, Westby with Plumptons.

The local county councillor, John Singleton, said Cuadrilla had always known it would have to carry out environmental monitoring and the company should have taken this into account in its planning. He criticised a failure by the county council to monitor the restoration process.

There were no objections from Fylde Borough Council, the Environment Agency, the Highway Authority or the industry regulator, the North Sea Transition Authority.

Planning permission for Preston New Road was refused by Lancashire County Council in June 2015. But this was overturned in October 2016 by the then communities secretary, Sajid Javid, after a six-week inquiry.

The site attracted daily protests as the location of the UK’s first and only horizontal fracked shale gas wells.

High volume hydraulic fracturing in 2018 and 2019 led to multiple small earthquakes. Operations at the site were suspended in August 2019 after the UK’s largest fracking-induced earthquake.

A moratorium on high volume fracking in England, introduced in November 2019, remains in place.

Preston New Road was mothballed and no physical work was carried out between August 2019 and spring 2025.

Cuadrilla failed to restore the site by the July 2023 deadline set in the original planning conditions. It was granted an extension until June 2025 but missed that deadline as well.

Work began in February 2025 to plug and abandon the two wells. Decommissioning equipment was still on the site in May 2025, five months later than the planning deadline.

Plant and equipment have now been removed from the site. The planners’ report said groundwater monitoring began in June 2025 and should be completed by June 2026.

But the hardcore that made up the drilling pad, the security and acoustic fencing and the access road remain. DrillOrDrop review of clean-up history

Planners said they asked the company to “investigate whether it might be possible to undertake further restoration works in parallel with the monitoring and permit surrender process”.

The report added:

“It is considered that these works do not necessarily require the site to be retained in its current form and that in particular, the perimeter and acoustic fencing could be removed at an early stage, thereby significantly reducing the visual impacts of the site.

“The applicant [Cuadrilla] has said this is not possible as these works would possibly disturb the monitoring boreholes or contaminate the groundwater which would affect the monitoring data. They would also prefer to carry out all the restoration works in one phase.”

• The planning committee meeting is at 10.30am, on Thursday 4 December 2025 at County Hall, Preston