Fracking Cash: People 'Will Turn On Each Other'

Campaigners fear government payments to those affected by fracking could divide communities in places like Yorkshire.


Drive through villages in the Vale of Pickering between York and the North Sea and you cannot miss the anti-fracking posters.

Communities here are at the centre of the debate about the impact fracking could have on the environment and people's quality of life.
Retired GP Tim Thornton is a vocal campaigner against shale gas extraction and lives a few miles away from the village of Kirby Misperton where the country's first commercial fracking site has been approved.
He thinks paying cash to local residents will cause nothing but trouble.




"I don't suppose I'll get any money but the people in the village will get it, the people in the next village won't, and that will turn communities against each other," he warned.
A few miles in the other direction, holiday cottage owner Lorraine Allanson could not disagree more.
She is one of the few locals willing to go on the record as an enthusiastic supporter of fracking.
"It obviously needs a lot of careful thought because where do you put the boundaries of who receives these payments," she told me.




"But I think it's a very good idea: that everybody benefits."
In nearby Malton, locals and tourists had mixed views.
Several told me either that they could see nothing wrong with fracking, or that there was nothing they could do to stop it, so they might as well take any money going.
But others, like 63-year-old Jane Dearlove, were not happy.
"I think having fracking anywhere near is not good, (the money) wouldn't make any difference," she insisted.