Ledston Open-Cast: Public Inquiry details

Leeds City Council has announced the details of the Public Inquiry following the appeal by Banks Developments against the council's decision to refuse Banks's planning application.

Serial environmental despoilers Banks Developments made an application to Leeds City Council under the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 to extract coal and other minerals from an environmentally sensitive site near Leeds in 2006. As previously reported on Northern Indymedia, permission for the project was refused following massive public opposition.

The developers then appealed to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government against the decision. The appeal process incurs significant costs for developers, and for this reason they are unlikely to follow this process unless they have been "given the nod" that they are likely to succeed by an insider. This is the process that is routinely used by national government to overturn local opposition to unpopular developments, e.g. power stations.

The appeal has led to the announcement of a Public Inquiry, which is supposed to be a neutral process to decide whether the appeal has merit. If it does so, the decision of the local authority can be overturned and the open-cast mining could be allowed to proceed.

Given the recent history of such appeals, where supposedly independent judges have incorrectly held that increasing energy production was the only way to a future with energy security (ignoring, conveniently for developers, arguments in favour of carbon descent) it seems likely that this Inquiry will decide in favour of the developers. If this happens there will be significant damage to the local environment, as well as wider damage to the ecosystem caused by carbon dioxide from the burning of minerals extracted from the site.

The coal extracted from the site would be enough to fire the furnaces of Drax coal-fired power station for about one day.

The Public Inquiry will start at Fairburn Community Centre at 10AM on 18th May 2010, and is expected to last 12 days.

Leeds City Council Planning Services have written to people who objected to the initial application, stating [1] that, "You can attend and if you wish to speak you can if the inspector agrees."

Leeds City Council Planning Services can be contacted at Leonardo Building, 2 Rossington Street, Leeds LS2 8HD; email planning@leeds.gov.uk; phone 0113 247 8039

Banks Developments can be contacted at Banks Developments North East Area Office, Inkerman Road, Tow Law, Bishop Auckland, County Durham, DL13 4HG; email enquiries@banksdevelopments.com; http://www.hjbanks.com/contacts

[1] Letter from Kim Devine, Principal Administration Manager, Planning Services dated 7 April 2010