The Government is consulting on a proposal on whether to make water companies in England statutory consultees in respect to planning applications for shale oil and gas development.

The proposal forms part of a new consultation announced by the Department for Communities and Local Governmenton on plans to make lead local flood authorities a statutory consultee on planning applications for surface water management.

Statutory consultees are the organisations and bodies, defined by statute, which local planning authorities are legally required to consult before reaching a decision on relevant planning applications. However, water companies are not currently statutory consultees for planning applications. They are a consultation body on each mineral planning authority’s Local Plan, which sets out the authority’s approach to different types of mineral development, including energy minerals like shale.

The Government now wants to test whether including water companies as statutory consultees in respect to shale oil and gas development in their areas will further strengthen the regulatory framework and help to ensure that their views are taken into account in the decisions of mineral planning authorities.

The consultation document points out that the existing regulatory framework already has safeguards in place to ensure that issues relating to water are addressed in a robust, joined-up way. The environmental regulator is required to check the potential impact on groundwater in terms of any shale oil and gas proposal, and will not grant a permit where groundwater and drinking water supplies could be affected.

Anyone seeking to use or supply the volumes of water involved in such schemes requires an abstraction licence from the environmental regulator, which sets the maximum amount of water that can be used. In granting these licences the regulator checks that the implications for water resources are acceptable.

 The consultation document says:

 "The Government is taking steps to ensure that the UK leads the way with shale oil and gas regulation. Shale oil and gas could increase the UK’s energy security, support thousands of jobs, reduce carbon emissions, and generate substantial tax revenue. In line with this, as parts of the process of shale oil and gas extraction rely upon water, we are testing whether to make water companies6 statutory consultees in respect to planning applications for shale oil and gas development in their areas."

The consultation on the water companies is in the form of a single open-ended question which simply asks whether the respondent has views on whether water companies should be made statutory consultees in respect to shale oil and gas development.

Deadline for responses is 29th January 2015 - click here to access the consultation.