Council officials have been accused of giving misleading advice on controversial plans for gas drilling and lower-volume fracking at Burniston, near Scarborough.

In January 2026, North Yorkshire planners recommended approval of the scheme in a report to councillors, who were due to make the decision a week later.

But a local campaign group, Frack Free Coastal Communities (FFCC), has said the planners’ report contained errors that could mislead councillors.

It also said failures in the handling of the application would make it difficult for the councillors to make a “properly-informed” decision.

FFCC accused officials of failing to:

• Respond to relevant communications
• Engage with technical and scientific analysis in expert representations
• Seek clarification from Europa when errors in the application were pointed out during the consultation
• Upload relevant documents and correspondence to the planning register

FFCC said officials ignored significant requirements of the council’s own minerals policy and gave “inappropriate advice” to Europa not to respond to representations from the public. The group also criticised “problems with the functionality of the online planning register”.

 Yesterday, in a letter to North Yorkshire’s chief executive, FFCC said:

“These shortcomings in the handling of the planning application and consultation have resulted in a report to the Strategic Planning Committee, which is misleading and contains internal contradictions which, in our view, would make it difficult for elected members to make a properly informed determination.”

The letter’s author, Chris Garforth, chair of FFCC’s steering group, said:

“We engaged with the consultation process in good faith. We were assured by the planners that all representations would be considered by the planning committee and that they, the planners, would seek responses from the applicant in respect of material matters drawn to their attention. We now see that has not been the case.”

He called on North Yorkshire Council to seek an external peer review of its handling of the Burniston application, saying this would:  

“go a long way towards restoring public trust in the ability of NYC’s planning department to do a high quality professional job and properly to balance the various stakeholder interests involved in such applications.”

Earlier this month, Burniston Parish Council made a similar request to North Yorkshire Council. We asked North Yorkshire to comment to both requests. We will update this article with any response.

The meeting of the strategic planning committee, due on 30 January 2026, was postponed at the last minute after multiple requests for the government to decide the application.

Today, the local government secretary opposed calling in the decision and said the application by Europa Oil & Gas should be determined by North Yorkshire Council.

Details

The letter from Frack Free Coastal Communities highlighted what it regarded as eight problems with the application process and the planners’ report:

Planning register: At the start of the consultation, the group said many people reported problems uploading their comments to the council’s online planning register. Professor Garforth said:

“There is no record of how many representations were lost because people gave up after their initial attempts. Problems with submitting documents persisted for several months.”

Application problems: Professor Garforth said planners failed to seek clarification with Europa about what he said were “serious errors and inconsistencies” in the application. These included descriptions of phases of work and the site and a failure of Europa to identify a great crested new population near the site.

 Minerals policies ignored: FFCC said the planners’ report ignored policy requirements for applications involving hydraulic fracturing for a health impact assessment and “compelling evidence” on acceptable management and mitigation of seismicity.

Professor Garforth also said:

“We note (from documents released following a FOI request by Burniston Parish Council) that planning conditions proposed by statutory consultees to minimise impact on nearby residents have been watered down or removed at the request of the applicant [Europa Oil & Gas].”

Advice not to respond to the public: Professor Garforth said an email from North Yorkshire Council planners on 10 June 2025 to Europa’s agent advised against replying to individual objections as this might set a precedent. Another email said planners’ “default position” was not to send representations to Europa for comment.

Technical and scientific representations: Planners did not send detailed comments from people with relevant scientific and professional expertise to Europa, Professor Garforth said. Nor were these comments addressed in the planners’ report. Professor Garforth added:

“This seems to render the public consultation process little more than a box ticking exercise”.

Errors in report: Professor Garforth said mistakes in the planners’ report had “the potential materially to mislead committee members”. These included describing the application as “exploration”, even though Europa had made it clear it was for “appraisal”, he said.   

Failure to communicate: FFCC received no response from the Principal Planning Officer to its correspondence in November 2025 about what advice had been sought from an industry regulator on seismic risk.

Missing documents and correspondence: The council initially failed to publish key documents, including Europa’s response to questions from the North York Moors National Park Authority and a final revision of the Preliminary Ecological Appraisal. They came to light only following the council’s response to a freedom of information request and were later published, in one case more than six months later.

DrillOrDrop asked North Yorkshire Council to respond to the FFCC letter. We will update this article with any response.