Ministers quizzed on opencast policy

Feb 8 2008 by Dave Black, The Journal

DISMAYED council chiefs in Northumberland are seeking a top-level showdown over growing evidence that strong local opposition to opencast coal mines is being overruled by the Government.

County council leaders want an early meeting with ministers to discuss the Government’s current policy on opencast mining and its potential implications for sensitive areas of Northumberland.

The move has been triggered by the recent decision by Communities and Local Government Secretary Hazel Blears to approve the plan to dig three million tonnes of coal from the 750-acre Shotton site near Cramlington – which was rejected by county councillors in 2006.

It follows decisions in Derbyshire and Leicestershire, where the Government agreed mining schemes in the face of massive local opposition.

Ms Blears approved the Cramlington mine on appeal, despite objections from 2,500 local people, the Scram protest group, the North East Assembly, Blyth Valley Council and a number of Cramlington pharmaceutical companies.

She took the decision despite the Shotton site lying in an official ‘constraint area’ – where county council policy says there is a strong presumption against opencast mining for landscape and regeneration reasons.

Now it is feared her ruling could leave other Northumberland constraint areas at greater risk of being targeted by mining companies.

The request for a meeting with ministers comes as the county council is preparing to rule on another controversial opencast plan at Potland Burn on the outskirts of Ashington, which also lies in a constraint area and where UK Coal wants to extract two million tonnes.

In addition, seven other potential sites containing more than 15 million tonnes of coal are being eyed by mining companies the Banks Group and UK Coal.

Council leader Peter Hillman said: “The Government has recently agreed three major opencast sites which were previously refused by Northumberland, Derbyshire and Leicestershire county councils, yet Government policy from 1999 says there is a general presumption against opencasting.

“We know there is ongoing interest in opencasting in Northumberland and a meeting with the minister to discuss any changes in national policy would help us take things forward.”

Tynedale councillor Bill Purdue said there was a danger that the Government’s decision on Shotton would ‘whet the appetites’ of mining companies to work other opencast constraint areas.

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The areas of constraint

PLANNING chiefs at County Hall in Northumberland have been working on a new opencast blueprint which seeks to allocate areas where mining is officially frowned upon and others where it would be allowed under the right circumstances.

These are called Opencast Constraint Areas and Areas of Less Constraint, and are aimed at guiding would-be developers and controlling the potential environmental and economic damage caused by major coal extraction.

The county's emerging minerals and waste development framework proposed Constraint Areas in the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in Tynedale, the Tyne/Derwent watershed, the coastline between Amble and Lynemouth and regeneration areas in south-east Northumberland.

Areas of Less Constraint were proposed for the Northern Coalfield – north of Morpeth and west of the A1068 road as far north as Acklington – Widdrington, and an area south and west of Morpeth, including land in the Stannington and Blagdon area, but not extending as far as Cramlington.

However, the draft strategy document has now been withdrawn for a major rethink after a Government planning inspector Jonathon King said the county council has failed to produce sufficient evidence to justify the proposed boundaries.