A MINING company have announced they could create up to 140 North-East jobs after the first phase of a ten-year plan to surface mine coal in the region was approved.

Coal mining is set to return to the region after a hiatus of almost two decades as Hargreaves Services secured planning permission from Northumberland County Council for Well Hill surface mine, near Morpeth in Northumberland.

The site contains 130,000 tonnes of high-quality coal which is set to be extracted over a two-year period.

The project, which will create 20 jobs, is the first of a series of proposed surface mines across the region for which the Esh Winning-based company are hoping to secure planning permission.

If successful, the company, which employs 3,000 people, hopes to extract up to half a million tonnes of coal every year from North-East sites during the next decade, creating up to 140 new jobs.

Up to three sites would be operational at anyone time, and the company, which also mines coal in Wales, has ear marked locations in Northumberland and County Durham, as well as North Yorkshire and Scotland.

The coal, which Hargreaves hope will total five million tonnes over the decade, will be sent to power stations in Yorkshire after it is sold to energy companies including EDF.

The project will see the first coal mining in the region since the Ellington Colliery, in Northumberland closed in 1994.

Chief executive Gordon Banham told The Northern Echo: "It is a long term plan. We have been working on this for the last two to three years.

"As a North-East company, these jobs will be North-East jobs and the profits will remain in the North-East.

"We would also not want to do anything which would harm the area, so we are working closely with local authorities and communities to minimise any environmental impact. The technology has moved on so much it allows us to do this.

"We could do it more quickly, but we are mining Well Hill over two years so there will only be ten trucks leaving the site a day."

He said technology had moved on in the past 20 years.

"A lot of the mining in the old days was deep shaft mining. Those days are gone.

"The technology has improved so much now you can use sites which before weren't extractable.

"In this region, we have a tradition of steel and coal. A lot of my team have years of industry experience."

He added although the company worked on ten year forward plans, they may be coal mining in the region for longer than a decade.

"There is plenty of coal in the North-East," he said. "I think we could be mining here longer than ten years."