Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps he has taken to institute baseline monitoring sites for air quality in residential areas in close proximity to Cuadrilla Resources' shale gas well site at Preston New Road.

The Department currently grant-funds a research consortium led by the British Geological Survey to deliver a baseline environmental monitoring programme in and around sites in the Fylde (Lancashire) where applications for shale gas wells have been made. As a result of this programme and since January 2015, researchers have been gathering data on a number of environmental parameters including air quality. The monitoring located close to the proposed shale gas exploration site at Little Plumpton (Preston New Road) includes instrumentation to measure atmospheric composition, wind speed and direction, air temperature and relative humidity.

The monitoring characterises the environmental baseline before any hydraulic fracturing takes place and enables future shale gas projects’ data to be checked against these “baseline” data, allowing any significant changes to be flagged for further scrutiny. The investigations are independent of any monitoring carried out by the industry or the regulators. The information collected is freely available to the public on the BGS website:

www.bgs.ac.uk/research/groundwater/shaleGas/monitoring/atmosphericComposition.html