Friends of the Earth (FoE) has submitted new arguments against plans to build an £160 million undersea coking coal mine off the coast of Whitehaven after the Court of Appeal ruled end-use emissions can be considered by planning authorities.
image: for illustration purposes only – Whitehaven from the air by Thomas Nugent, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
… West Cumbria Mining’s key legal arguments at the public inquiry has been entirely undermined…
Cumbria Crack writes:
The group, which was one of three key players in the public inquiry into West Cumbria Mining’s planning application last year, say that a recent ruling from the Court of Appeal has major implications for the plans.
In its ruling on a planning application for oil extraction at Horse Hill in Surrey, the Court of Appeal said that planning authorities do have the power to consider the ‘end use’ emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels in the environmental impact assessment.
This overturned a previous High Court ruling which said these emissions could not lawfully be taken into account.
West Cumbria Mining made arguments in the inquiry based on the previous ruling that end-use emissions would not need to be assessed.
Friends of the Earth senior lawyer, Niall Toru, said: ‘One of West Cumbria Mining’s key legal arguments at the public inquiry has been entirely undermined by this Court of Appeal judgement…’.
Supporters of the coal mine development believe that the need for steel, which requires metallurgical coal, is not going to go away and that it is kinder to the environment to extract coal for British steel on British shores…
Meanwhile, Friends of the Earth campaigners will deliver letters to MPs Trudy Harrison (Copeland), Mark Jenkinson (Workington) and Simon Fell (Barrow and Furness) this week.
Michael Gove, the Levelling Up Minister, will have the final say as to whether the mine can go ahead and the group’s letter asks the MPs to pass on their concerns about the mine to the Secretary of State.
