We already have oil producing wells at Brockham and Albury, oil drilling at Horsehill, and a proposal to drill for oil on Leith Hill. As more oil has been found, there have been suggestions that we could have up to 1,000 wells drilled in clusters on around 100 sites of 2 to 5 acres across The Weald in the coming years as the oil reserves are exploited.

In response, Liberal Democrat County Councillors have called for a stronger planning regime covering plans to drill for oil across the South East of England to address the potential scale and environmental damage implied by this forecast.

We have called for Planning Authorities to receive full disclosure of the potential future development proposals for a site at the outset, not just details of the initial drilling work to be carried out, and are arguing that small initial developments should not be approved if it is clear that a more significant development is required for commercial oil exploitation.

The Liberal Democrats have also raised concerns about the potential risks of the processes that are likely to be adopted when extracting the oil reserves, the extra traffic that will be generated in rural lanes as the sites are built and then as the oil is transported away from the drilling site, and the potential contamination of our water source – the local aquifer, and want the Planning Authorities and the Environment Agency to scrutinise applications vigorously and impose strict conditions before any permission to drill for oil is granted.