A challenge to the refusal of planning permission for gas drilling and fracking in the North Yorkshire village of Burniston was formally submitted today on the last possible date.

We reported earlier this month that Europa Oil & Gas had given notice that it would appeal against the decision by North Yorkshire Council, made in May 2026.

The Planning Inspectorate confirmed to DrillOrDrop that the formal appeal had been submitted. Today was the deadline for appealing against the refusal.

There will now be a validation process to ensure that all the documents submitted by the appellant are correct.

A case officer and planning inspector will then be assigned to the appeal. The inspector will decide the timetable for the process, including dates for submission of the rival cases.

The inspector will also decide how the appeal will be considered. It could be by a full public inquiry, a less formal hearing or by written representations.

The Planning Inspectorate was affected by today’s worldwide Microsoft outage. It reported this evening:

“To guarantee the security and stability of the digital appeals service for customers, we have decided to keep new submissions paused over the weekend.

“We intend to have the service back up and running safely on Monday 16 November. We will update this page when we do so.”

DrillOrDrop will update this article with web links to the Burniston appeal when the digital service is fully restored