UK’s first coal mine in 30 years blocked by High Court as ‘legally flawed’ over climate claims

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

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

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

Climate campaign group Friends of the Earth and South Lakes Action on Climate Change 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, continued to oppose the claim.

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

Lawyers for West Cumbria Mining 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.”