ANTI-FRACKING campaigners have expressed their concerns that a controversial energy firm has taken over plans to drill in Sussex.

Cuadrilla was granted permission to drill in Balcombe following a unanimous decision by West Sussex County Council earlier this month.

The decision caused an uproar among local residents and campaigners who staged months of protests against the fracking firm’s plans for the sleepy village in the summer of 2013.

However now Cuadrilla has announced the sale of its Balcombe operation to another controversial energy firm Angus Energy.

Angus Energy is currently locked in a long-running planning dispute with Surrey County Council after the firm drilled without permission at their site in Dorking.

Green MEP Keith Taylor said: “As if having Cuadrilla circling around again wasn’t bad news enough, the people of Balcombe have now been tossed out of the oily frying pan and into the fire. As our neighbours in Surrey are only too aware, Angus Energy is a firm that believes it is above local democracy. Angus’s belligerence after drilling without permission in Surrey betrays a company that is, at best, ignorant of the planning regulations imposed on them, and, at worst, feels no duty to abide by them. In short, Angus is a firm that can’t or shouldn’t be expected to be trusted.”

Campaigner and Balcombe resident Kathryn McWhirter added: “We are dismayed that Angus Energy plan to begin work in Balcombe ‘at the earliest opportunity’. They are not wanted here and will be met with opposition. We always thought Cuadrilla would sell on, but not so fast and not to Angus Energy.

“We never trusted Cuadrilla. We are even less inclined to trust Angus.

“There’s been a political imperative in the South East to avoid using the F word – fracking.

“Their ultimate target is in truth the thick shale above and below the ‘limestone’ – which one day will be fracked.”

On January 9, West Sussex County Council’s planning committee voted unanimously to grant Cuadrilla temporary permission for flow testing and monitoring of an existing well at the Lower Stumble site in Balcombe.

Cuadrilla, which explores for and develops shale gas, was told it could now begin to flow test the well it drilled there five years ago.

Cuadrilla said the well required no hydraulic fracturing because the rock is naturally fractured.