Fracking firm to give first households £2,000 payouts

Shale gas firm Cuadrilla says 29 Lancashire households will get payments - but one says they will refuse 'blood money'

A group of residents in Lancashire will soon receive 2,070 each for living near a fracking site, in the first payments made direct to British householders by a shale gas company.

Cuadrilla said that 29 households within a 1km radius of the site would get the payment as part of a 100,000 community benefit fund for the second well it is drilling at a site between Blackpool and Preston that has attracted ongoing anti-fracking protests.