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

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Henley on 10 April (HL15067), what communications they have had with landowners and local authorities regarding the decommissioning of fracking sites in the event that an operator does not fulfil their obligations.

The Department routinely corresponds with a range of stakeholders in relation to the regulatory regime for shale gas extraction, including decommissioning obligations. The Government has always been clear that it expects licensees to fulfil obligations to decommission shale gas sites.