Dear Councillor,
CMA/1/37 – APPLICATION BY UK COAL TO SURFACE MINE BRADLEY ON DERWENTSIDE
I write now in respect of the subject. In the not too distant future, Planning Application CMA/1/37 will come before you. In the space of one or two hours all the weight of documentation will be methodically set before you along with the recommendations of your officers. You and your colleagues sitting on the planning committee will be called on to make a decision.
This decision, whether to allow this place that I now call home to be spoiled once more with ugly scars on a landscape, or more deeply but less obviously with the psychological scars caused by inconsideration will not be taken lightly. However, few if any of the committee members will quite understand just how enormous would be the consequences of a decision to proceed. Some may be minded
to accept the pressure being put upon you to work ‘in the national interest’ and grant UK Coal permission to proceed with their plans.
On paper and on the face of it these plans look entirely reasonable. They are a matter of record as are now the views of our communities. A closer inspection than is possible in the short time that the papers will be before you will however reveal errors and inaccuracies as well as blatant omissions. Some of these are glaring and others more subtle. UK Coal will as always play for the crowd and rely on their considerable experience and expertise in matters of this nature. Whereas we seek to rely on fact. Here in this part of Derwentside
we are well used to fighting our own corner, not always successfully but always with a passion and conviction not easy to understand let alone appreciate. The planning procedures do not easily lend themselves to capturing the depth of feeling that the vast majority of local people likely to be affected might have tried to reflect in their many, many letters of objection and signed petitions. These will be reduced to dry statistics and synopses. I ask you therefore to take the time in advance of the committee hearing to read up and research the thousands of pages of information, painstaking collected and collated, by your own officers as well as our network, the Pont Valley Network. This will not be easy but is worth doing. Then gauge the depth of feeling and the impact which we believe surface mining now would have on our reviving communities. This has been hard work and is worth reflecting upon. We have sought to bring together as much as we might have discovered and set out as objectively as possible in one place, our website which is www.pontvalleynet.co.uk. We believe that the facts should speak for themselves and ask only that those making decisions for us should fully understand and appreciate the enormous effort that has gone into this and many other campaigns before it so that the correct decision is taken. Free from the threat of this or future applications of a similar nature we might then move on further with our lives, redirecting the same amount of energy to what truly matters. Rebuilding our communities with the same energy and commitment as we had to do the last time UK Coal and their like were in these parts.
Yours sincerely,
www.pontvalleynet.co.uk
CMA/1/37 – APPLICATION BY UK COAL TO SURFACE MINE BRADLEY ON DERWENTSIDE
I write now in respect of the subject. In the not too distant future, Planning Application CMA/1/37 will come before you. In the space of one or two hours all the weight of documentation will be methodically set before you along with the recommendations of your officers. You and your colleagues sitting on the planning committee will be called on to make a decision.
This decision, whether to allow this place that I now call home to be spoiled once more with ugly scars on a landscape, or more deeply but less obviously with the psychological scars caused by inconsideration will not be taken lightly. However, few if any of the committee members will quite understand just how enormous would be the consequences of a decision to proceed. Some may be minded
to accept the pressure being put upon you to work ‘in the national interest’ and grant UK Coal permission to proceed with their plans.
On paper and on the face of it these plans look entirely reasonable. They are a matter of record as are now the views of our communities. A closer inspection than is possible in the short time that the papers will be before you will however reveal errors and inaccuracies as well as blatant omissions. Some of these are glaring and others more subtle. UK Coal will as always play for the crowd and rely on their considerable experience and expertise in matters of this nature. Whereas we seek to rely on fact. Here in this part of Derwentside
we are well used to fighting our own corner, not always successfully but always with a passion and conviction not easy to understand let alone appreciate. The planning procedures do not easily lend themselves to capturing the depth of feeling that the vast majority of local people likely to be affected might have tried to reflect in their many, many letters of objection and signed petitions. These will be reduced to dry statistics and synopses. I ask you therefore to take the time in advance of the committee hearing to read up and research the thousands of pages of information, painstaking collected and collated, by your own officers as well as our network, the Pont Valley Network. This will not be easy but is worth doing. Then gauge the depth of feeling and the impact which we believe surface mining now would have on our reviving communities. This has been hard work and is worth reflecting upon. We have sought to bring together as much as we might have discovered and set out as objectively as possible in one place, our website which is www.pontvalleynet.co.uk. We believe that the facts should speak for themselves and ask only that those making decisions for us should fully understand and appreciate the enormous effort that has gone into this and many other campaigns before it so that the correct decision is taken. Free from the threat of this or future applications of a similar nature we might then move on further with our lives, redirecting the same amount of energy to what truly matters. Rebuilding our communities with the same energy and commitment as we had to do the last time UK Coal and their like were in these parts.
Yours sincerely,
www.pontvalleynet.co.uk