Victory Against UK Coal

The Pont Val­ley Net­work and Durham Coun­ty Coun­cil have suc­cess­ful­ly pre­vent­ed UK Coal min­ing half a mil­lion tonnes of Coal from Bradley when UK Coal appealed the deci­sion made last year.

The Pont Val­ley Net­work and Durham Coun­ty Coun­cil have suc­cess­ful­ly pre­vent­ed UK Coal min­ing half a mil­lion tonnes of Coal from Bradley when UK Coal appealed the deci­sion made last year.

The inspec­tors report was pub­lished on Thurs­day 23rd Feb­ru­ary which rejects the appeal, by UK Coal. Durham Coun­ty Coun­cil unan­i­mous­ly reject­ed the appli­ca­tion a year ago. The appeal took three weeks and end­ed in Novem­ber last year. There were excel­lent con­tri­bu­tions from the coun­cil’s speak­ers and a large num­ber of peo­ple from the local com­mu­ni­ty.


The inspec­tor wrote,

155 … [T]here is a strong and unequiv­o­cal con­clu­sion that the win­ning
of coal by sur­face work­ing at Bradley would have a mate­r­i­al and detri­men­tal
effect on the set­tled envi­ron­ment of the Pont Val­ley and the wider Der­went
Val­ley.’

‘159. The com­mu­ni­ty ben­e­fits are not suf­fi­cient to out­weigh the harm and, in the
case where this accords with the local view, this must car­ry extra weight…In a nut­shell, approach­ing a 15-year peri­od to achieve what UK Coal con­tend would be equiv­a­lent sta­tus, would
deliv­er a mere 3‑days nation­al coal sup­ply. This does not seem to be a fair
bal­ance of harm to need, where no nation­al pol­i­cy need is iden­ti­fied.’

It was felt that if this appli­ca­tion were to have been suc­cess­ful then there would have been a con­tin­u­ous cycle of exten­sions and fur­ther mines sought in the area. The area con­tains impor­tant ecosys­tems and is well used by local peo­ple, includ­ing those study­ing his­toric min­ing meth­ods. Local young peo­ple added to the debate, point­ing out that this coal would pro­vide the UK grid with 3 days worth of coal which could be obtained from sus­tain­able sources or proved unnec­es­sary by ener­gy effi­cien­cy. A local farmer showed how areas which were open cast were seri­ous­ly deplet­ed, as the soil ecosys­tems were destroyed, when com­pared to areas which have not been mined. The Coal Action Net­work also con­tributed to the voic­es against the mine with expe­ri­ences of how coal com­pa­nies real­ly act once min­ing has been approved. The Pont Val­ley Net­work and local peo­ple were suc­cess­ful in prov­ing that the val­ley has far more to offer, to locals and tourists alike, as it is rather than the ‘restora­tion’ offered by UK Coal.

Well done to those who fought this case.

The arti­cle about the orig­i­nal rejec­tion of the mine by Durham Coun­ty Coun­cil can be seen at http://northern-indymedia.org/articles/1389