Plans for UK’s first coal mine in 30 years quashed by High Court

The decision to grant planning permission for what would have been the UK’s first coal mine in 30 years at Whitehaven in Cumbria has been quashed by a High Court judge.

The Government first granted permission for the new coal mine in December 2022.

Then-levelling up secretary Michael Gove greenlit the Whitehaven mine, in line with approval from the independent planning inspectorate earlier in the year. 

West Cumbria Mining was to operate the mine at Whitehaven at the former Marchon chemical works site.

The company said at the time that it would remove coking coal from beneath the Irish Sea for steel production and that it will not be used as an energy source.

The approval in 2022 followed the decision being delayed three times amid Westminister turmoil in the year.

Before that, the fate of the project had been hanging in the balance for over two years after the local county council initially approved the mine in 2020.

Coal mine go-ahead of ‘legally flawed’

Mr Justice Holgate said in a ruling on Friday that giving the go-ahead for the development at Whitehaven in Cumbria was “legally flawed”.

Climate campaign group Friends of the Earth (FoE) and South Lakes Action on Climate Change (SLACC) took legal action over the Department for Housing, Communities and Local Government’s decision to grant planning permission in 2022.

While the government withdrew its defence in July, the developer of the proposed site, West Cumbria Mining (WCM), continued to oppose the claim.

At a hearing in July, lawyers for FoE said the decision “smacked of hypocrisy” given the UK’s “vocal international advocacy” over the phase-out of coal in energy systems.

Lawyers for WCM said there had been “repeated mischaracterisation” of the plans and the development would have a “broadly neutral effect on the global release of greenhouse gas”.

In his judgment, Mr Justice Holgate said: “The assumption that the proposed mine would not produce a net increase in greenhouse gas emissions, or would be a net zero mine, is legally flawed.”

The High Court decision follows the quashing of the approval for an oilfield in the Lincolnshire Wolds, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), in July.