A £30m government cash injection to help revive former mining communities - including in the North-East - was welcomed yesterday.

One former Labour minister said he was pleased that the coalition was not "turning its back on the coalfields, as the Tory government of the 1980s and 1990s did".

The cash will be used to "drive out inequality and deprivation from the country's coalfields areas", ministers said - funding everything from community facilities to skills training and youth work.

In Murton, in the constituency of Easington, the funding stream helps maintain the sports fields and pavilion at the Miners Welfare Institute and Recreation Ground.

But the grant, spread over two years and made to an independent charity called the Coalfields Regeneration Trust (CRT, marks a 17 per cent cut on its current funding.

The trust has received £53.7m from the department for communities and local government (DCLG) between 2008 and 2001 - an annual injection of £17.9m.

Furthermore, the announcement appeared to reveal that the trust was expected to become 'self-funding' either in 2013, or two years later.

Nevertheless, the cash was a welcome boost after a deafening silence from ministers about the future of the Coalfields Regeneration Trust, since the coalition was formed last May.

On a visit to Houghton, Grant Shapps, the local government minister, said: "Despite the tough times we are in, we continue to help those who need it most - wherever they are.

"We are making a significant investment in coalfield communities, one secured against a background of hard decisions on spending priorities."

Calling on the trust to turn to "local leaders" to deliver projects, Mr Shapps added: "I am looking to local people, councils and businesses to play more of a role in regenerating these areas."

The grant follows last year's report, by former Labour backbencher Mick Clapham, which found ex-mining communities still suffered from deep-seated structural and social problems.

The study called for a scheme delivering smaller grants or loans to help businesses which struggled to obtain funding following the banking crash.

Welcoming the £30m, John Healey, a former Labour treasury minister and a Yorkshire MP, said: "The CRT is needed now as much as it was in 1999.

"It is needed in the coalfield areas that are still struggling, those that were hit harder in recession and will find it harder to grow again in recovery."

Nearly 200,000 coal jobs were lost because of the closure of 124 pits since 1981, resulting in "severe economic, social and environmental deprivation in many communities", a separate study found.

Grants have gone to 900-odd community projects in the former Northumberland and Durham coalfields and £27.8m was spent on the reclamation of Lambton Cokeworks, near Chester-le-Street.