The South Downs are for Nature - not Oil

Aim

A campaign to save the South Downs and Hampshire countryside from harm caused by extraction of oil.

We’re determined to do what we can to save the South Downs and other areas of Hampshire from the polluting oil extraction that’s planned to occur at the Avington Oil Field near Cheesefoot Head. We also want to help protect our district and county from further oil extraction.

Since we announced our intent to campaign on this issue we’ve been inundated with offers of help and we really appreciate your support. To have maximum impact, we would love your help with crowdfunding our campaign.

WinACC is a local charity and we want to transparently present our approach to this campaign. We hope that doing so helps people identify how they might best help and gives supporters an opportunity to provide feedback. Do reach out to us at [email protected].

Our website has an overview of the campaign. Our campaign has four focuses:

Awareness of local oil extraction sites and the pollution associated with them is low across our county. Even when people have heard about the oil, it’s not always realised that the polluting gases associated with it are simply vented (released into the air).

With our articles, social posts and coverage in the Hampshire Chronicle we’ve already started raising awareness. We intend to continue doing that via targeted social media, leafleting and supporting people to publish articles in their parish magazines.

We hope that this approach will increase understanding of this issue, encourage people to support our campaign for changes to the Hampshire Minerals & Waste Plan (see below) and help communities oppose any future planning applications.

There is lots of information regarding this oil pumping that is not yet in the public domain. Following the lead of similar campaigns elsewhere, we’re intending to use Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to find out as much as we can about the operation of oil companies at each site across Hampshire.

We’ll be looking at the details of the licensing, how the licences have been monitored, whether there have been any breaches of planning or licensing, or any situations that came close to that.

We then intend to put that all in the public domain so communities can make properly informed decisions about the impact of these sites. If there are breaches that we think have not been properly pursued, we’ll look at options for doing so.

Permission to extract oil from the Avington Field hinged on the Hampshire County Council Minerals & Waste Plan still allowing oil and gas extraction within the county.

This plan undermines the climate ambitions of the South Downs National Park, Winchester District and Hampshire County Council itself, and provides no support for the UK government’s national Carbon Budgets.

We’re asking people across Hampshire to write to their county councillor and ask them to remove provision for oil and gas extraction from the new draft plan. If implemented, this crucial policy change would make it hugely difficult for further oil and gas extraction licences to be granted in our county.

This strategy is already having an impact - we have been receiving replies from Hampshire County Councillors. It has also sparked the Lib Dems and Conservatives into action, resulting in national coverage and bipartisan support for stopping oil extraction at Avington. The more people that engage with the plan to generate support the better. 

The Energy Bill which is currently going through Government has the potential to help this local issue whilst also addressing problematic releases of methane across the UK oil and gas industry. Amendments to the bill from MP Chris Skidmore and MP Wera Hobhouse would stop venting (releasing) or flaring (burning) of methane by 2025.

This would prevent the polluting release of gas into our countryside and reduce the damage it does to our national park and climate.

We’re asking people to write to their MP and ask them to support these amendments, as well as to support Hampshire County Councillors in changing the Minerals & Waste Plan.

We’re open to feedback on this plan and will be evolving it as it progresses. Email us at [email protected] to let us know what you think. Email or fill out the form for the zoom link to any calls we host.

And finally, please continue to share our campaign widely and encourage others to join in!

https://forms.gle/DgiSppR5N8krF7Az7

The costs involved with running a campaign like this can vary. As WinACC is a charity all funding needs to be in line with charity law and guidance. We work hard to ensure all donations are used in the most efficient way wherever possible.

We expect to split your funding roughly equally between: resources such as leafleting, staff time, and social media advertising.

Staff time helps fund key members of staff who are working on this campaign, this is a new campaign for WinACC and most staff time has already been allocated to other projects on climate change. Leafleting helps pay for printing, shipping and some distribution of leaflets about SD4Nature (or other physical things if we decide to do them). We've had success with targeted social media ads, so we expect to spend some of the funding on this too.

If we hit our target, we get a little extra as a contingency.

A WinACC campaign. 

Registered charity number 1150754. A company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales with company registration number 08013043.

This project successfully funded on 28th September 2023