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To: James Brokenshire, Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government

No new opencast coal mines in Durham, UK.

01/07/20

Plans to extend an open cast mine by its owners have been rejected by councillors.

The Banks Group wanted to enlarge its Bradley West mine in County Durham to extract an extra 90,000 tonnes of coal.

More than 6,000 letters of objection were sent with opponents branding the plan "environmentally unacceptable".

Durham County Council's planning officers had recommended the plan be approved but councillors rejected it at a meeting, held via videolink.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-53255021

We request that you revoke the planning permission for the Bradley opencast mine.

Why is this important?

No new opencast coal mines have started in England since 2013. Since then the Government has said that it will phase-out coal by 2025. It's vital that we prevent a new mine starting which would cause local and international environmental destruction and which the local community have clearly rejected.

Bradley is a greenfield site in County Durham between the villages of Dipton and Leadgate. The site supports a wealth of plants and animals, including Great Crested Newts, badgers, red kites. Banks Group plan to mine 550,000 tonnes of coal from the site, starting work this spring.

The Bradley opencast mine is a case where the original decision to grant planning was grossly wrong and the development is likely to damage the wider public interest.

Since the planning permission was granted in June 2015 there have been significant changes in national and international policy with regards to coal and climate change.
1) Coal use in the UK has dropped to 7% of the UK’s energy mix compared with 30% in 2014.
2) The government has said it will phase-out coal by 2025.
3) The UK and Canadian governments want to be world leaders with their Powering Past Coal Alliance.
4) The Paris Agreement requires that action is taken to prevent global temperatures from raising by 2 degrees and pursue efforts to keep them from a 1.5 degree raise.

Thomas Davison, 28-year-old a resident living 300 metres away from the proposed opencast site said; “Banks' desire to extract 550,000 tonnes of coal is driven by nothing more than profit and not at all by a genuine need for energy. We have moved onto other forms of cleaner energy for the good of our global climate. So why is it worth harming the local wildlife and the local economy for one last money grab?”
Durham

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Updates

2020-07-16 13:08:06 +0100

Petition is successful with 89,352 signatures

2018-08-08 17:31:18 +0100

Thank you for signing this petition.
Sadly the new Secretary of State has said he will not revoke planning permission.

While this is bad news we are looking for other ways to stop the opencast.

This week six people were found not guilty of aggravated trespass (and two cases were dropped) for trying to stop Banks gaining access to the site. The Judge could not be satisfied that Banks Group were not currently or about to commit an offence under the Wildlife and Countryside Act, by destroying the habitat of Great Crested Newts. For more info about the court case see http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/16400836.dipton-consett-open-cast-mine-protesters-cleared-by-court/

Join local people for a skillshare and action camp the 5th to 9th September 2017 https://protectpontvalley.noblogs.org/coal-nee-more/

2018-02-23 16:36:06 +0000

50,000 signatures reached

2018-02-22 10:52:42 +0000

We've got over 47,000 signatures! Thank you, this is doing really well.
For more info about the campaign see www.coalaction.org.uk. Please can you share it with your friends and family so we can show the government and coal mining companies that the age of coal is over?

2018-02-18 11:45:42 +0000

20,000 signatures reached

2018-02-18 09:54:04 +0000

10,000 signatures reached

2018-02-16 21:22:33 +0000

5,000 signatures reached

2018-02-15 18:41:17 +0000

1,000 signatures reached

2018-02-15 18:14:08 +0000

500 signatures reached

2018-02-13 17:45:20 +0000

100 signatures reached

2018-02-13 15:43:13 +0000

50 signatures reached

2018-02-13 14:53:05 +0000

25 signatures reached

2018-02-13 14:12:57 +0000

10 signatures reached