No new opencast coal mines in Durham, UK.

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?”