EAST Lancashire councils have been ordered to ignore alternative energy sources when considering applications for fracking.

Planning authorities should instead recognise ‘mineral extraction is essential to local and national economies’, according to a government planning document.

Despite the release of another government document, which highlighted 16 environmental risks linked to the process, including earthquakes and radioactive water, the document said: “Mineral extraction is essential to local and national economies.

“Mineral planning authorities should not consider demand for, or consider alternatives to, oil and gas resources when determining planning applications.”

It added authorities should give ‘great weight’ to the benefits of fracking, the process of drilling and injecting fluid into the ground at high pressure in order to fracture shale rocks to release natural gas inside.

Critics have linked it to earth tremors, high levels of methane in the water that enables residents to set it on fire and pollution.

Local coordinator for Friends of the Earth, Brian Jackson, from Pendle, said the decision should be left for local authorities.

He said: “Has the government not heard of a thing called local democracy? I think they were big on that at one stage.

“If local people are against it, they are entitled to say ‘frack off and back off’ and that’s still the message from Friends of the Earth.

“We can’t do it on the scale that will be of any use to us.

“The earthquake issue is muddying the water a little bit; we get quite a lot of earthquakes in Lancashire because of the mines, but the recent ones will have been stimulated by fracking.”

Mr Jackson added it would only work on a larger scale and would have ‘unheard of costs’.

He said: “The amount of water pollution caused by fracking is outrageous; hundreds of thousands of litres of water filled with contaminants.

“People with fire coming out of taps makes good headlines and good TV but it’s true.”