Timeline

2013

• 5 Feb: Sussex Police identified protest against oil and gas as a public threat at Celtique Energy’s Broadford Bridge exploratory drilling operation, calling it ‘a site for potential “domestic extremism”’. According to council planning committee documents:

The use of the site for oil/gas extraction has come to the attention of the Sussex Police who had identified it as a site for potential ‘domestic extremism’ from those opposing austerity measures. It is not considered that there is any action which can be taken within the County Council’s powers to overcome these concerns.

• March: Officers from the National Domestic Extremist Unit including one well-known officer, Ian Skivens were spotted monitoring protestors at the Fracked Future Carnival at the London Shale Gas Forum, which had been forced to move from Kensington to the London Military Barracks.
• August: Sussex Police known to be spying on anti-fracking protestors at Cuadrilla’s controversial Balcombe site over the summer. A poorly redacted FOI disclosure released the following year revealed that the operation used 'covert' intelligence-gathering: 'Once the operation moved into August...it was apparent that an appropriate range of intelligence sources were being harnessed, including where appropriate ECHR [European Court of Human Rights] compliant covert means.'

• November: Kent Police (unsuccessfully) request a list of the names of people attending a public debate on the pros and cons of fracking, organised by sociology academics at Canterbury’s Christ Church University. Local councillors, anti-fracking campaigners and academics demanded that the Kent Police and Crime Commissioner intervene.

2014

• March: Greater Manchester Police and Crime Commissioner Tony Lloyd set up an ‘Independent Advisory Panel on the Policing of Protest’ as a response to the controversy over the policing operation at the Barton Moss exploratory site in Salford. Its remit was to “provide strategic advice on how police manage major demonstrations”.
• April: After an internal investigation Kent Police is forced to publicly admit it planted a Special Branch detective at the Canterbury Christ Church University fracking debate. The purpose was to ‘gather information that could prevent harm being caused to those attending such a meeting or similar future events’.
• December: A Freedom of Information request submitted by Netpol confirmed that training for senior police officers on public order strategy was using a fictional anti-fracking protest based specifically on camps at Balcombe in West Sussex and Barton Moss in Salford. Course materials from the College of Policing's ‘Public Order Gold Commanders’ training in October 2014 revealed that ‘Hydra’ simulation exercise undertaken by participants used an imagined scenario called Operation Hamilton, “a proposed Hydraulic Fracturing (Fracking) operation” that is “likely to be the subject of an environmental protest”.

2015

• November: