Plans to build the UK’s deepest coal mine in Whitehaven have officially been called off following an extensive eight-year battle.
‘We’re delighted this long running saga has finally drawn to a close,’ Tony Bosworth, climate campaigners at Friends of the Earth said. ‘Congratulations to all the brilliant local campaigners who fought so powerfully to stop this mine.’
Although congratulations are in order, the journey to get to this point has been far from easy. In 2017, developers West Cumbria Mining Ltd submitted an application to construct a new deep coal mine and it single handedly caused one of the nation’s biggest environmental political rows.
The plan was first approved by Cumbria County Council in October 2020, however after an outcry from several environmental campaigners including Greenpeace and Greta Thunberg the council suspended its decision – this is where the plans should have stopped.
However, the former Conservative government, who originally promised to not intervene in the project, then called for a public inquiry which led to Michael Gove granting planning permission for the mine in 2022.
The decision encouraged two of the UK’s leading environment rights charities, Friends of the Earth and South Lakes Action on Climate Change, to launch legal challenges against the government’s approval of the coal mine in January 2023. The case reached the High Court where Mr Justice Holgate ruled last September that the planning permission was granted unlawfully.
Mr Holgate said the government’s assumption that the mine would not produce a net increase in greenhouse gas emissions, or would be a net zero mine, as ‘legally flawed’.
After the plans were dismissed in court, West Cumbria Mining was given a deadline by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to decide whether it wanted to precede with the plans. This deadline has just past, and the developers have decided to throw the towel in, much to environmentalists delight.
‘The previous government should never have given the greenlight for this highly polluting and unnecessary coal mine in the first place – and West Cumbria Mining should have pulled the plug on it last year when planning permission was comprehensively quashed and coal licenses were refused,’ Tony continued.
‘The focus must now switch to ensuring local people get the green jobs they so urgently need – areas like West Cumbria have been left behind for far too long.’
Photo by Nikolay Kovalenko via UnSplash
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