This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

The government has rejected plans for an opencast coal mine in Northumberland on the grounds that it would exacerbate climate change.

Eighteen months after Sajid Javid first took responsibility for a planning decision for a new coal mine at Highthorn, the communities secretary said he had concluded the project should not go ahead.

Environmental lawyers ClientEarth said the decision was the first time the UK government had rejected a planning application citing climate change as the reason.

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Rose Dickinson, a campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said: “This is a significant victory for local residents and the climate, it means an important step forward has been taken in ending the era of fossil fuels.”

Explaining Javid’s decision, officials said: “He concludes that overall the scheme would have an adverse effect on greenhouse gas emissions and climate change of very substantial significance, which he gives very considerable weight in the planning balance.”

The communities secretary said the impact on global warming, together with harm to the local landscape, outweighed the economic benefits of the mine.

Banks Mining, which submitted its planning application in 2015 and had argued the project would bring substantial investment to the local area, hit out at what it branded a “perverse decision”.

Gavin Styles, the company’s managing director, said: “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 Mr Javid.” The company said it had not yet decided whether to appeal.

The use of coal for electricity generation has plummeted in the face of carbon taxes and competition from gas, but the Highthorn site is not the UK’s only proposed new coal mine.



West Cumbria Mining wants to build a £200m mine at Woodhouse in Cumbria, south of Kendal, which would be the UK’s first deep coal mine in several decades. The company plans to extract metallurgical coal for steel-making rather than power generation.

Cumbria county council has so far postponed meetings on the project, and late May is understood to be the earliest it will decide whether to approve or reject the mine. Two coal power stations this year have already announced closure plans, after which the UK will have just six coal plants.