Great News! Green Light for Coal Mine is Now Amber, Thanks to You!

Image: Wild honeysuckle and Irish Sea 

There is great news!

The unanimous green light that Cumbria County Council had given the developers, West Cumbria Mining,  has now effectively turned back to amber.   Cumbria County Council has confirmed that it will no longer rely on the resolution decision that we were challenging.

This turn around would not have happened without youramazing support for the Judicial Review (which had been granted full approval to go ahead and challenge the County Council’s decision). 

West Cumbria Mining has now submitted a revised planning application to Cumbria County Council.  This revised plan seeks to answer the legal challenges which were to be brought by us in the Judicial Review.

We believe the true reason why West Cumbria Mining has submitted a revised planning application is to try to defeat our legal challenge.

For example the middlings coal will now, say West Cumbria Mining, with this new plan be magically transformed into coking coal!

Our brilliant lawyers at Leigh Day will now seek costs from Cumbria County Council and WCM, because we have in effect achieved what we set out to do, which was to overturn the council’s unanimous decision to approve the coal mine.

We are seeking legal costs in order to keep our fighting fund for another day.  This is should we need the fighting fund after the council’s planning meeting to decide whether or not to approve WCM’s new and improved cunning plan!
So, there is now an opportunity to firstly lobby the council so they do not, yet again, say yes to this revised planning application for the first deep coal mine in the UK in decades.

Should Cumbria County Council say yes again, Keep Cumbrian Coal in the Hole will challenge that, again!

But first things first – the revised plan can be seen Online via the County Council’s website at: planning.cumbria.gov.uk.   Application Ref No: 4/17/9007

Even if you have written in opposition to the plan before please do write again…this is in effect a new plan.

I will send out info soon to help people challenge this revised planning application with your own letters of opposition to Cumbria County Council.   We have not got long – the (first) official deadline is June 15th. 

We can Keep Cumbrian Coal in the Hole !!