Demonstration against UK Coal at High court

05.06.2013

Social Jus­tice and Envi­ron­men­tal Cam­paign­ers demon­strat­ed at the High Court of Jus­tice, Lon­don.

Today des­per­ate Coal Com­pa­ny — UK Coal sought to over-rule the com­mu­ni­ty, Durham Coun­cil and the Sec­re­tary of State’s Inspec­tors to be allowed to mine over half a mil­lion tonnes of coal from rur­al Coun­ty Durham.

Today was the first of two days of a judi­cial review into the deci­sions made against the mine. The Coal Action Net­work and oth­er groups includ­ing the Lon­don Min­ing Net­work, came to sup­port the pre­vi­ous deci­sion and show the coal com­pa­nies that they still face fierce oppo­si­tion to this and there oth­er open­cast mine appli­ca­tions.

The deci­sion should be announced tomor­row, 6th June 2013. If the Judge finds that the pub­lic inquiry to be sig­nif­i­cant­ly unlaw­ful then there will be anoth­er inquiry. It is like­ly that this would take 3 weeks like the first one. This caus­es mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty stress and uncer­tain­ty. It is feared that if this mine is giv­en the go ahead then exten­sions and fur­ther appli­ca­tions in the area will result.

UK Coal are in a dif­fi­cult finan­cial sit­u­a­tion and local con­trac­tors are no longer sup­ply­ing goods on cred­it at their Pot­land Burn site in Northum­ber­land. UK Coal are try­ing to avoid their pen­sion oblig­a­tions with regards to Daw Mill Col­liery and can­not be trust­ed to keep to plan­ning stip­u­la­tions or restore sites. Burn­ing coal for pow­er is unsus­tain­able and caus­es local and glob­al envi­ron­men­tal issues.

At appeal the Inspec­tor for the Sec­re­tary of State said that the plan had an unac­cept­able impact on the envi­ron­ment and ameni­ty of local com­mu­ni­ties and that the com­mu­ni­ty ben­e­fit did not out­weigh the dam­age. At the plan­ning hear­ing the coun­cil­lors vot­ed unan­i­mous­ly against the deci­sion and coun­cil­lors called UK Coal ‘thugs’ and ‘van­dals’ say­ing they were try­ing to bribe them with road improve­ments.

The site at Bradley is of high land­scape val­ue, cur­rent­ly there are newts, bats, red kites, his­toric mines and wag­onways. The area is well used for walk­ing and play­ing by locals and tourists. There is a strong cam­paign in favour off the val­ley and against the UK Coal appli­ca­tion see  http://pontvalley.net

The Coal Action Net­work took this action today to sup­port the inspector’s deci­sion and to sup­port the com­mu­ni­ties fight­ing open­cast.

For more infor­ma­tion see coalaction.org.uk or look up The Coal Action Net­work’ on Face­book.