PROPOSALS to give households affected by fracking cash amounting to thousands pounds have been labelled as a “bribe” for local people.

Campaigners claimed the Government move was a “cynical attempt” to get people to accept fracking by offering them hard cash.

However supporters of the process have welcomed the idea – saying it would mean more money for the less well-off.

A shale gas wealth fund was unveiled in 2014 to set aside up to 10 per cent of tax proceeds from fracking to benefit communities in the UK hosting wells.

And Prime Minster Theresa May is now considering paying the money directly to individual households instead of councils and local trusts.

Downing Street has declined to estimate how much payouts could be worth, however it is thought individual households could receive between £5,000 and £20,000.

In May county councillors in North Yorkshire gave the go-ahead to fracking at an existing well at Kirby Misperton, a controversial move which is now being legally challenged by campaigners

And the protest group Frack Free Ryedale has now urged communities to oppose the payout move

Sue Gough, who lives near the site, said: “This is a cynical attempt by the Tories to bribe local people to accept fracking by offering them hard cash.

“People need to know that by accepting this money they are selling their communities down the river and condemning them to industrialisation and ruination by the frackers, who have no respect for our environment, our livelihoods or health.”

Ryedale Liberal-Democrat councillor Di Keal, another opponent of fracking, said: “In the current economic climate people, when many people are struggling financially, the offer of £10,000 might seem appealing, but it is little compensation for the risk to the environment, our health and well-being and the wrecking of the countryside that the industry will bring.”

But local businesswoman Lorraine Allanson of the group Friends of Ryedale Gas Exploration said the proposal was a good idea.

“It will directly benefit people in the area and be a positive step to ensuring everybody locally benefits from that gas that is underneath their feet,” she said.

A spokesman for Third Energy, the company behind the Kirby Misperton plan,said they were firm believers that the local community should benefit from unconventional gas production in the area.