Update - West Cumbria mine application approved

Spent much of today at the Development Control committee at County Hall in Kendal where the West Cumbria mine application was being considered.

Four speakers from West Cumbria, plus the applicant, spoke in favour of the proposal: myself, Mayor of Copeland Mike Starkie, Mirehouse community worker Keith Cartner, and David Douglas.
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There were also a number of "public participation" speakers against the application most of whom did not give much detail about where they live or work. None of the objectors claimed to live or work in Copeland and of those who made any reference to where they are based, none claimed to live in West Cumbria or anywhere nearer to West Cumbria than Lakeland. 

I'd like to congratulate Keith Cartner on a very powerful speech about the needs of the local community in Mirehouse and David Douglas on a very effective demolition of the supposedly "green" argument against a mine to produce coking coal specifically for making steel (which is that the application proposed.)

As David Douglas pointed out, you cannot make wind turbines, cars, buses or trains without steel. the same applies to many other things which a modern economy depends on. To make steel you need coking coal.

While we are using steel there will be a steel industry and it will use coal which must be mined somewhere. At the moment the UK steel industry uses coal mined in the USA using methods which do far more damage to the environment than the new mine proposed for West Cumbria will.

I am pleased to report that the committee voted unanimously to approve the application subject to a planning agreement and a long list of conditions.

Comments

garyb said…
It came as no surprise to me that approval was unanimous, since the hopes of local job opportunities were always going to carry the day. Did the company argue against any of the conditions or was it, as might be expected with cooperative working between applicant and planners, a united front and hence the conditions are as presented in the officer's report? Either way, the local community has had its say. From now on the decisions are in the hands the Environment Agency, the Marine Management Organisation, the Coal Authority and the palaces of Buckingham, Windsor and Westminster.
8:40 am
Chris Whiteside said…
The officers updated the conditions at the meeting, for example to make the controls on the hours trains can run on a Saturday more restrictive, and added one new one on water at the request of UU, taking the number of conditions up to 99 (plus the requirement for a section 106 agreement.)

No, the applicant did not object to any of the conditions. You may well be right that the officers and applicant have worked together to reach agreement on the conditions - that is not necessarily a bad thing provided the officers are not too much of a "soft touch" because if the developer is on board with the conditions there is a better chance that they will be properly implemented.

I should add that in several important areas such as materials and landscaping the impact of the conditions is not yet finalised as the applicants have to produce and agree with the council a plan on how the relevant issue will be addressed before the development starts.

Both myself and Councillor Keith Hitchen raised issues in respect of the conditions and I actually asked that some of the more important ones come back to the committee - this is unusual but not unprecedented in major or complex planning applications and this is about as major and complex as it gets.

The committee did not insist on this but I spoke afterwards to the chairman and senior officer and both were sympathetic and indicated that they might well take up the suggestion.
9:21 am
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