On its website, Banks Mining says its Highthorn surface mine project in England “is a unique opportunity to bring substantial investment to the Druridge Bay area and improve the lives of its people and wildlife for many years to come.
“In July 2016, Northumberland County Council Strategic Planning Committee were minded to approve the planning application pending a decision by the Secretary of State (SoS) for Communities and Local Government to decide whether to ‘call-in’ the application.” The SoS ‘called-in’ the decision and a Public Inquiry started in May 2017. Subsequently, the SoS Sajid Javid decided to overturn the approval from the government planning inspector and refuse permission for the mine in Northumberland. This has resulted in an angry response from Banks Mining.
Gavin Styles, Managing Director at Banks Mining, says: “In the same week that the Government decided to support passport manufacturing jobs in France instead of those in northeast England, it has now demonstrated that it would prefer to source the coal that is essential for a variety of important industries across the UK, such as steel, house building and concrete production, from Russia or the US, rather than support substantial investment and job creation plans in our region.
“This is an absolutely perverse decision which flies in the face of the recommendation for approval given by Mr Woolcock, the Planning Inspector – the expert appointed by the Government itself to assess this scheme – after his careful consideration of all the facts laid out at the Public Inquiry, as well as the unanimous support we had for the scheme from an experienced, cross-party Northumberland County Council planning committee.
“It has been made for purely political reasons and is totally contrary to the principles of local decision-making that previously appeared so important to Javid. The Planning Inspector’s clear and carefully considered judgement was that “the national benefits of the proposal would clearly outweigh the likely adverse impacts…” yet Javid has chosen to flagrantly disregard this expert opinion from the comfort of his London office without ever having taken the time to even visit the area in question.
“Furthermore, his decision to notify the world of his judgement via social media 90 minutes before we, as the applicant, had received official notification of it is deeply unprofessional, and shows an utter disregard for the jobs of the hundreds of people that we employ.
“If the Prime Minister takes up the invitation of the De La Rue Chief Executive to come to the region and explain the passport contract decision to his employees, we would ask that she also brings Javid with her, so he can explain his thinking to our loyal northeast workforce and the many local suppliers and customers with which we work.
“It also continues to highlight the difficulties businesses face creating investment opportunities and employment in the UK, as recently expressed by Steve Morgan, Chairman of Redrow plc.
“The UK is still dependant on coal for a number of purposes, and at a time of great economic uncertainty, we firmly believe that the importance of securing investment in northeast England, creating dozens of high quality local jobs, and opening up opportunities for regional suppliers to win substantial contracts could not be any clearer.
“The Government’s own projections state that coal will continue to be an important part of the UK’s energy mix for at least the proposed duration of operations at Highthorn, and substantial amounts are also essential for a wide variety of important UK foundation industries, such as the manufacturing of cement and steel.
“Coal has been used to meet more than a quarter of the country’s energy requirements during the recent spell of cold weather, which clearly demonstrates the importance of its use to provide an essential and resilient part of a balanced mix of energy generation sources over the medium term.
“Supporting skilled northeast jobs, delivering regional environmental and conservation enhancements, avoiding the carbon emissions caused by importing the coal supplies that the UK still needs and providing a secure domestic supply of energy by meeting our continuing need for coal through indigenous reserves makes far greater sense than relying on coal and gas imports from potentially unstable overseas markets that are thousands of miles away.
“The Highthorn scheme would see us create at least 100 well paid, full time jobs on the site, invest £87 million into the Northumberland economy, keep a total of £200 million within the UK economy by not importing 3 Mt of coal that would otherwise come from overseas suppliers, and make supply chain contracts worth a total of £48 million available to locally based businesses.
“We owe it to our highly skilled and loyal northeast workforce, our UK customers and the many local residents, community organisations and businesses that have expressed their support for our Highthorn proposals over the last four years to not just leave things here, and will now carefully review the precise reasons for the Secretary of State’s decision before deciding on the most appropriate next steps to take.”
