Skip Nav | Home | Mobile | Editorial Guidelines | Mission Statement | About Us | Contact | Help | Security | Support Us

Wales

Scottish Coal's Collapse : A Failure of the Planning System

Steve Leary | 25.04.2013 16:34 | Climate Chaos | Ecology | Energy Crisis | London | Wales

LAON's Press Release questions the role the Scottish Planning System has played in this tragic sequence of events. It draws attention to the fact that 18 opencast sites are affected, not just the six often mention in most news items on this story and suggests that some form of public inquiry is needed if trust is to be restored into the Scottish Planning System and lessons learned so that this situation can be avoided in the future.

THE LOOSE ANTI OPENCAST NETWORK

LAON PR 2013 – 25 25/4/13

SCOTTISH COAL’s COLLAPSE: A FAILURE OF THE SCOTTISH PLANNING SYSTEM?

It is understandable why all the discussion about the liquidation of Scottish Coal is over the loss of jobs of those working on Scottish Coal’s six working sites. This has come as a terrible shock to all those who are directly affected.

However, there is a much more important issue and that is whether the collapse of Scottish Coal also represents a catastrophic and systemic failure in the Scottish Planning System and the way it implements Planning Conditions once permission has been granted to work a site.

The failure of Scottish Coal is putting the restoration of many more sites at risk. It is not just the six working sites of Dalfield / Poweharnel, Mainshill, House of Warter / Burnston Remainder, Broken Cross, Dunstonhill and St Ninians which are caught up in this failure of the Scottish Planning System. These six 'working sites' are just the tip of a bigger iceberg. To this list should be added the Blair House in Fife, a site which was mothballed last year. It should also include the 11 other sites which either have not been restored, or have only partially been restored by Scottish Coal such as:

Shewington (Midlothian),
Dalquhandy (Lanarkshire),
Glentaggart (Sth Lanarkshire)
Damside (Nth Lanarkshire)
and Chalmerston (East Ayreshire)

What is needed is a transparent public investigation into understanding what has gone wrong, before the Scottish Mining Restoration Trust is given any responsibility over restoring these sites.

These are some of the questions to which answers are needed, if Scotland’s Planning System is to avoid making similar mistakes in the future:

How many sites are there in total affected not just by Scottish Coal going into liquidation, but also by ATH Resources going into receivership last year?

Why were none of the Restoration Bonds called in?
What proportion of the cost of site restoration would be met if the Restoration Bonds were called in?

Why did Local Authorities grant new planning permissions without attaching the requirement that old sites be restored before the development of new sites could begin?

Scottish Coal was developing a Renewables Division. Had discussions with some Local Authorities about site restoration at the following sites: Broken Cross, Poniel, Westfield, Dalquahandy, House of Water and St Ninians being contingent on the Scottish Coal Company or any other subsidiary of the Scottish Resources Group gaining planning permission for a wind farm on the site?

These, the Loose Anti Opencast Network believe, are just some questions which need to be asked and answered. Anger about this state of affairs should not just be directed at the owners of Scottish Coal. Some of it needs to be directed at a Scottish Planning System, which we believe would have been found wanting, were there to be a thorough investigation into why so many sites have been left derelict and, as a consequence, people now find themselves without work.

Steve Leary for the Loose Anti Opencast Network said,

“ This whole episode does need a thorough investigation, if we are to learn how to avoid so many people being made redundant by this industry in the future. A investigation is also needed to restore trust in a tarnished planning system. Much has been said about the causes of Scottish Coal’s collapse, this being the result of a recent fall in coal prices and the rising cost of diesel fuel.

We in the Loose Anti Opencast Network, believe that if a more detailed inquiry was made into why this firm collapsed, it would find some of the reasons in the way the Scottish Planning System worked to enable this Company to gain new planning permissions without the requirement that it restored old sites. It ended up with a situation that the consequent pile of debt, symbolically represented by every new pile of overburden of earth and rock, which now dot the Scottish landscape, on sites which the Company could not afford to restore, proved in the end, to be too much. This collapse might have been sudden, but, we believe, the seeds of this collapse were sown a long time ago.“

END END END

INFORMATION ABOUT LAON

The Loose Anti-Opencast Network (LAON) has been in existence since 2009. It functions as a medium through which to oppose open cast mine applications and works with groups where local people feel that such a development is inappropriate
.
CONTACTING LAON

Steve Leary, LAON’S Co-ordinator, at  infoatlaon@yahoo.com

You can now follow LAON on twitter @  http://twitter.com/seftonchase

GROUPS IN THE LOOSE ANTI OPENCAST NETWORK:

Coal Action Network Whittonstall Action Group, Northumberland, North Pennine Protection Group, Northumberland, Pont Valley Network, Co Durham, Pittington Residents Group Co Durham, Newton Lane Action Group, Leeds, Residents Against Birklands, Gatshead Cowley Residents Group, Sheffield , Skelmansthorpe Action Group, Kirklees Shortwood Farm Opencast Opposition, Nottinghamshire, West Hallum Environment Group, Derbyshire, Smalley Action Group, Derbyshire, Hilltop Action Group, Derbyshire, , Minorca Opencast Protest Group, Leicestershire, Campaign Against Great Oak Opencast, Staffordshire, Stop Opencast at Sharlston, Wakefield and Alumwell Action Group. Walsall Just Say No to Lignite, N Ireland, Coal Action Scotland Saline Parish Hub, Fife Green Valleys Alliance, Rhymney Valley Merthyr Tydfil Anti Opencast Campaign, Merthyr Tydfil Llwdgoed Action, Merthyr Tydfil and Varteg Protest, Torfaen

Steve Leary
- e-mail: infoatlaon@yahoo.com

Publish

Publish your news

Do you need help with publishing?

/regional publish include --> /regional search include -->

Wales Topics

Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista

Kollektives

Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World

Other UK IMCs
Bristol/South West
London
Northern Indymedia
Scotland

Server Appeal Radio Page Video Page Indymedia Cinema Offline Newsheet

secure Encrypted Page

You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.

If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

IMCs


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech