Opencast plan set for refusal

Sep 26 2007 by Dave Black, The Journal

FAMILIES in a former Northumberland pit town look set to win their battle against plans to operate a major opencast coal mine near their homes for almost seven years.

Campaigners in Ashington have fired off more than 660 protest letters against the bid by UK Coal to extract 2m tonnes of coal and 500,000 tonnes of fireclay from the 600-acre site at Potland Burn, on the North-West outskirts of the town.

They fear the 65-job scheme will spoil their quality of life, swallow up open countryside and harm regeneration efforts in the area.

Next week county councillors will be recommended by planning officers to refuse permission for the mine, which lies in an area where local policy says there is a strong presumption against opencasting.

UK Coal says a valuable energy reserve at Potland Burn will be sterilised forever by rising minewater unless the site is worked with the next 10 to 15 years. It has promised a £500,000 community fund in return for permission.

But a report by officers to next week’s county planning and regulation committee says the scheme should be rejected because of its impact on local regeneration efforts, residents’ quality of life and the need to protect open spaces close to communities.

They say a major opencast mine at Potland Burn would potentially undermine the ‘positive image’ which the regeneration strategy was seeking to deliver for Ashington and the surrounding area.

Yesterday the recommendation was welcomed by mother-of-one Claire Fitzpatrick, who lives in New Moor Close, Ashington and is vice-chair of the protest group No Opencast in Ashington (NOCIA).

“We have fought hard on this and it has been a long, drawn-out battle, so we hope the councillors on the committee will take the advice of their officers and turn it down. Being so close to houses, this will affect people’s daily lives as well as the regeneration of Ashington.”

Wansbeck MP Denis Murphy has claimed the mining scheme would set the town back 25 years, and branded UK Coal's offer of a £500,000 community fund an insult.

Stuart Oliver from UK Coal said: “Potland Burn offers a valuable coal resource at a time when there is a growing need for it.”

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Decision due on Northumberlandia

A FINAL decision on another controversial opencast mining bid in Northumberland could be known within the next two months.

The Government is working on a target date of the end of November for its ruling on whether the Banks Group can dig 3.4m tonnes of coal from a 750-acre site at Shotton near Cramlington over seven years.

Permission was rejected by the county council last summer.

A lengthy public inquiry was held earlier this year into the company’s appeal to the Planning Inspectorate.

Now hundreds of local protesters and several Cramlington pharmaceutical companies opposing the bid are waiting to hear the outcome.

Yesterday Gordon Halliday of the county council’s planning department said: “We have been told that the Government’s target date for a decision on the Shotton appeal is November 29.”

Opponents claim the mining operations will ruin the environment.

They also claim it will harm economic regeneration efforts in Cramlington and interfere with companies’ clean-air production processes.

The scheme also involves the creation of a 300m-long earth sculpture of a naked reclining female known as Northumberlandia.