Lancashire County Council has agreed with exploration company Cuadrilla to extend the time period to make decisions on planning applications for shale gas development at two new sites to 30 June 2015.

The council has received applications from Cuadrilla to drill, frack, and test gas flows, with associated separate applications for environmental monitoring, at two sites in Lancashire - Preston New Road at Little Plumpton, and Roseacre Wood at Roseacre.

The extension follows a request by Cuadrilla to consider additional information about the applications. Cuadrilla's request resulted in the deferral of a meeting of the Development Control Committee in January 2015 at which councillors had been due to make a decision on each application.

The council has subsequently consulted upon the new information provided by Cuadrilla and planning officers must now review the feedback from the consultation period, and the details supplied by Cuadrilla, before preparing reports for a further meeting of the committee.

Consultation on the further information relating to both sites took place from Friday 20 March to Friday 17 April to allow representations to be made. It had previously been agreed that both applications would be decided by 30 April 2015.

The council will announce dates for the applications to be determined by the Development Control Committee in due course.

Commenting on the decision, environmental organisation Friends of the Earth described the postponement as “yet another fracking decision delayed until after the election” saying it was “no surprise that more than 1000 candidates have now promised to oppose fracking if elected.”

FoE is calling on whoever leads the next Government to follow the example of Scotland and Wales and introduce an immediate moratorium until the climate and health risks have been assessed.