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It would seem that the Tories at County Hall don't...
Independent councillor Jeff Osborn asked that the Environment Select Committee consider the fracking announcement as an emergency item at their forthcoming meeting.
The chairman (Cllr. Bridget Wayman) replied "The agenda has been set for a full ESC meeting and I am not prepared to take this as an emergency item next Tuesday. You are, of course, able to ask a question or make a statement and I would be happy for you to do that, and I will respond accordingly. We need to take a considered approach on this and seek views from all sides."
From the DECC web site, it seems that the opportunity to comment on, or object to, the selection of an area as one of those where fracking licences will be offered will disappear after the September deadline. After that the Government will proceed in due course to ask for bids for the licences, presumably in private. The next that will we (and the Council) will hear is when a planning application is submitted. By then its quite likely that other local objections will have been lost on appeal, and the Wiltshire Tory line will then be 'not worth risking a refusal and the costs of an appeal'.
Meantime, any objections need to be based on some close analysis of the selection method and the so-called Appropriateness Assessment. No one yet seems to be asking why these four coterminous Wiltshire areas have been selected.
So Environment Select will sit on their hands and let it happen. Seemingly no thought for the communities likely to be affected.
That's localism and democracy, Cameron and Jane Scott style.
If Wiltshire Council won't act, who else can - or will? Wiltshire Wildlife Trust? Friends of the Earth? Town and Parish Councils?