Recent reports in the media indicate that the new Energy Minister Matthew Hancock has signalled another desperate approach by this Government to speed gas-fracking licence applications with the object of reducing approval from six to three months.

Evidently ministers will soon announce which companies have been granted on shore gas licences.

The minister announced that any profit from onshore fracking must be shared with communities. However such payments will have to be distributed by the fracking companies to towns/villages not the government. Bribery on a grand scale.

However, it is this Government that is introducing this legislation and, as such, cannot absolve itself from the long-term environmental damage and rape of the beautiful countryside.

With a general election on the horizon, hopefully large numbers of the electorate will cast their vote to secure a government that will have a long-term vision of protecting the countryside for generations to come.

John Burns, Henfield