Reform wants to frack Lincolnshire. What would that mean?

Lincolnshire’s future is under threat. Or at least that’s what Reform’s leaders are telling you.

Sean Matthews, who runs Lincolnshire council, says the Labour government is trying to turn this “beautiful rural county to an industrial wasteland of pylons and electricity factories”.

Andrea Jenkyns, the mayor of Greater Lincolnshire, complains about “truckloads of chicken poo” transported across the county for biomass boilers.

Right now, Reform is campaigning hard against green energy initiatives in Lincolnshire. From solar panel farms to the pylons meant to upgrade the National Grid, senior figures in the party have claimed the countryside will be ruined by new infrastructure.

At the same time, however, Reform’s leaders have also promised that if they win the next election, they will greenlight a massive fracking project in Lincolnshire. For a party that claims to care about the sanctity of the countryside, the plan is immensely hypocritical and has the potential to be incredibly destructive.

Andrea Jenkyns on GB News in February: “I’ve always been pro-fracking.”

Fracking is a controversial method of shale gas extraction, which involves blasting underground rocks with water and chemicals. It has not been permitted in England since 2019, when experiments in Lancashire led to minor earthquakes. Reform and a small section of the rightwing press are excited about shale gas reserves in Gainsborough and eager to resume fracking.

“Come 2029, if we have a Reform government, we can drill, baby, drill,” Andrea Jenkyns said at a campaign event this year. This is despite her saying solar farms would “desecrate” rural land.

When she went on GB News earlier this year, she was interviewed by the presenter Ben Leo — he described Lincolnshire’s shale gas deposits as “liquid gold” (a phrase coined by Donald Trump). Jenkyns smiled when he said: “I want to turn the countryside into Swiss cheese and just go for it.”

What would turning Lincolnshire into Swiss cheese look like? Here’s what it has done to parts of the American countryside:

“I want to turn the countryside into Swiss cheese” — it might look a bit like these fracking sites in Wyoming. Photo courtesy: Simon Fraser University

Reform has set up a campaign website called Lincolnshire Opposes Renewable Eyesores. “We stand,” it says, “for countryside protection, and rural communities, not concrete fields of panels, fire-risk battery banks, or towering pylons cutting across the horizon”. The website adds that it “respects both people and the land”.

But fracking could be a disaster for Lincolnshire.

In areas where fracking is allowed, such as the US, it has led to the devastation of rural areas, an increase in earthquakes, the reduction of air quality, and the contamination of nearby drinking water supplies. Research has found that people who live near fracking sites are more likely to suffer from asthma. Babies born close to fracking sites are also more likely to be underweight, suffer from birth defects, and grow up to have cancer. (It’s worth adding that these studies look at fracking in the States, where few safeguards are in place.)

It’s also bad for house prices. After fracking was briefly attempted in Lancashire — leading to two small earthquakes in 2011 — house prices dropped by around 4%. One study in the US found property values of houses near fracking sites fall by up to 14%.

Half of Britons are opposed to fracking, and just a quarter are in favour, according to a survey. Interestingly, there is much more excitement for renewable energy. Eighty percent of people surveyed by the government either support or strongly support the use of renewables (compared to 4% opposed or strongly opposed).

If Reform really don’t want “concrete fields” in the countryside, voters should be very worried about the creation of well pads needed for fracking. These are platforms the size of two football fields. One estimate suggests that 72 of these well pads would required for Lincolnshire, from now until 2043.

Reform’s leaders are already cosying up to fracking corporations. At an energy conference in Lincolnshire back in February, Richard Tice was spotted talking to George Yates, the CEO of the American energy firm Heyco. Its subsidiary wants to frack an area in Gainsborough — and Reform have already promised that if they win the next election, they will be allowed to.

This photo taken in February 2025 shows Richard Tice chatting to George Yates, CEO of Heyco, an American energy firm. Credit: Extinction Rebellion Lincoln

Meanwhile Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the billionaire owner of Manchester United, has agreed to meet Nigel Farage in the coming weeks. He is the chairman of INEOS, a chemical and energy company that also hopes to frack areas in Lincolnshire.

HOPE not hate — as you may have guessed — is not a science publication, nor do we claim to have an easy fix for Britain’s high energy bills. But what seems clear is that Reform’s concerns about the sanctity of the Lincolnshire countryside are insincere. They want to frack the county — or “drill, baby, drill”, as Andrea Jenkyns puts it — and that could unleash a lot more damage than solar panels and pylons.

In other news…

🤡 Clowncil tax

More bad news about council tax bills, which are set to go up in eight of the ten Reform-led authorities. “I never once, in the entirety of the English county election campaigns, said we could cut council tax,” said Nigel Farage last week. Which makes these English county election campaign flyers rather awkward…

🛫 They’re coming for your easyJet tickets

Farage was chuffed to announce Sarah Pochin as his candidate for the Runcorn and Helsby by-election (which she won). “We’ve made some big steps forward in terms of the calibre of candidates that we put up in this party,” he said, mindful of the cranks and oddballs who previously stood for Reform. So how is she getting on? Speaking to her constituents by Facebook Live last week, Pochin made some bonkers comments that a digital ID system could end with citizens banned from travel. She said the government could “stop us making certain purchases”, like flying abroad. “They can stop that happening with digital ID now,” she insisted. “That is the worst case scenario but that potentially is the sort of control that the state could have.” High calibre indeed.

🤯 Make Reform Normal Again

Alex Phillips, the former GB News presenter, was described a couple of years ago as “the new female face of Reform”. In a 2023 newspaper interview, she said she would “throw all of [her] weight” behind the party, adding that it had some work to do in getting its ideas out there. So what does Phillips have to offer to articulate her political vision? “Make Science Racist Again” is the title of her latest blog, in which she argues against “regarding all humans as biological equals”. Yikes!