North Yorkshire Council says an issue with a small number of email responses to the Burniston Gas Rig planning application has now been resolved.
Concerns about problems submitting public responses to the planning application process had been raised after it became clear that some emails sent to North Yorkshire Council's planning team had landed in their Spam folder.
Europa Oil & Gas is seeking to install a 38m high gas drilling rig on land in Burniston, near Scarborough, as part of its “proppant squeeze” project. It submitted a planning application for the project in March.
If plans are approved by North Yorkshire Council, the initial scheme at Burniston would test whether gas could be extracted on a commercially viable basis and, if further approvals were granted, extraction could take place for “about 20 years”.
Last month a problem with the council's planning portal left some residents unable to comment on the planning application on-line. In response the council provided a bespoke email address for people to send their responses to.
The Frack Free Coastal Communities group posted on their Facebook page that they had been told a number of the email contributions had been sent to the Spam folder and were inaccessible. The post said:
"NYC Planning department have advised us today that a (possibly) large number of objections were directed to their spam box of their email system at the end of March - presently they say they cannot recover these"
When asked by This is the Coast about the situation the council said that after further investigation they found that only two emails were affected and these have now been recovered. The council said:
"We have identified two representations that automatically were diverted into the ‘spam archive’ after being identified as potential security risks. These have since been recovered and registered, and we do not anticipate there to be any further problems.
The two identified representations were received on March 15 and April 8, 2025.
Given the high level of representations with this particular application, there may be a small delay between representations being lodged and them being manually uploaded to the portal."
The consultation period for the planning application had been extended until April 30 after the previous website issues. The council say
"We will accept representations up until the point of determination, when the application goes before the relevant planning committee."
The planning application can be seen at
https://onlineplanningregister.northyorks.gov.uk/Register/Planning/Display/NY/2025/0030/ENV
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