LETTER: Battle to protect our countryside

It was an uplifting experience of a community in action! And they need to be in action because we in Balcombe have had a miserable summer due the unconventional exploratory drilling operation by Cuadrilla, with up to 120 trucks through our village a week, excessive drilling noise at night for weeks, over a hundred riot police and their vans and we the residents enforcing regulation, not to mention demanding mining and radioactive waste permits, not the EA or Cuadrilla!

We have fought to be heard by the government, West Sussex County Council, the Environment Agency, DECC and the Health and Safety Executive.

We went to every planning meeting, we objected to planning, thousands have signed our petitions; we lobbied the Environment Agency, the Health and Safety Executive, our MPs and our councillors.

A door to door survey in the village showed that 85 per cent of our village did and does NOT want Cuadrilla here, the industrialisation of our Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and the unacceptable risks to the purity of our water, our air and soil.

We, and many committed people, have done everything humanly possible within the bounds of law to stop this industry despoiling our rural communities and we have got nowhere and we have not been heard.

But we the little people will continue to fight the government rhetoric, this billion dollar industry and its the massive PR machine.

The people of Wisborough Green and Kirdford, we salute you and wish you well.

Juliette Harris, Diane Forster, Stephen Morris, Louisa Delpy, Charles Metcalf, Beth and Tom Sanderson, Paul Mitchell, Sue Taylor, Collette Randall, Tessa Land-Smith, Chris Edwards, Carol Rogerson, Prof Laurie Dunne, Robert and Lisa Greer, Karen Davis, Shirley and Roy Bliss, Douglas Wragg, Nancy Towers, Katie and Chris Archibald, Joanna Fitzsimmons, Helen Savage, John Butcher, Sarah Reynolds

Balcombe residents