Environmental group Coal Action Network has obtained expert legal advice that reveals that the UK government’s coal licence ban bill seriously risks failing in its aim to stop all new coal mining in the UK.

This would be an embarrassment for the Labour government, who is expected to announce the new bill at COP30 this Autumn.

Coal ban bill: glaring loopholes emerge

Barristers’ Estelle Dehon (KC) and Rowan Clapp of Cornerstone Chambers have warned that the draft coal ban bill leaves the door open for mining coal from ‘coal tips’.

During mining, there’d be small chunks of coal that companies couldn’t historically sell. As a result, they would discard them along with soil, rocks, and other mining waste in mounds called ‘coal tips’.

There are over 5,000 coal tips across the UK. However, companies have concentrated over half of these in South Wales. There are millions of tonnes of coal contained within the coal tips, with concentrations and quantities varying between the tips.

Coal that historically couldn’t be sold due to its small size, became marketable later. From as early as the 1980s and across England, Scotland, and Wales, companies have mined coal tips for the coal historically discarded within them. Currently, there’s a live proposal to mine 400,00 – 640,000 tonnes of coal from two coal tips in Bedwas, South Wales.

Local Councillor Janine Reed, who lives in the area of these tips said:

This legal advice is a wake-up call. Our community strongly supports the ban on new coal, but a loophole that allows mining on our doorstep would be a bitter betrayal. We need a watertight bill that truly protects communities like ours.

Licencing loophole

Companies need to obtain a licence from the national regulator for both deep and opencast coal mining before they can start a new project.

The forthcoming coal ban bill will likely amend the Coal Industry Act 1994. In particular, it will remove the ability for the national coal regulator to issue any further coal mining licences.

However, the UK government does not require a licence for the mining coal from coal tips. This means the new bill would fail to have any effect at all on this third method of mining coal in the UK. Companies located coal tips near to the coal mines that created them, and as such, local communities feel particularly let down by this loophole. The coal tips loophole would expose them to the risk of enduring the same noise, dust, and disruption that the original coal mine did if a company mines the coal tip that was left behind.

The bill is currently under draft within Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. Energy Minister Michael Shanks has oversight on this.

Labour failing a key manifesto pledge – again

Along with four other major political parties, in 2024, Labour made a manifesto pledge to rule out all new coal mining within the UK.

This was in the same year that the UK halved its coal imports, demand, and mining compared to the previous year. On top of this, it eliminated coal from its power supply – reflecting a decade-long rapid decline in all areas of coal. This has led to improving air quality as well as reducing climate crisis impacts.

Communications manager at Coal Action Network Daniel Therkelsen said of the coal ban bill:

We hope DESNZ listens to this legal advice and acts on it – or risks egg on its face. Coal is the world’s dirtiest fossil fuel and the coal we first mined to power our industrial revolution is still in our atmosphere, driving climate chaos today. The UK went on to popularise coal around the world – now we have a historic responsibility to show the rest of the world a path away from it for our collective future on this shared planet.

Featured image via the Canary