AN MP has raised concerns about a mining company’s ability to complete the restoration of an opencast site after coal has been extracted.

Pat Glass, MP for North-West Durham, said question marks surrounding the long-term financial status of UK Coal: “completely undermines any certainty that they could meet their obligations to restore the site after the coaling phase has been completed.”

Mrs Glass was giving evidence at the planning inquiry being held at Leadgate Workmen’s Social Club and Institute into UK Coal’s application to extract more than 520,000 tonnes of coal from a site at Bradley, near Consett, over three-and-a-half years.

Last month, UK Coal avoided going into insolvency when it secured a funding package, including a £4m Government loan, for the managed closure of deep mines in North Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire.

As part of the deal, UK Coal has put six of its opencast sites on the market in what Mrs Glass described as a “fire sale”, including the Park Wall North site, between Crook and Wolsingham, which is in the restoration phase.

Mrs Glass said the current state of the international coal market meant there were low prices and falling UK demand for the coal which would be extracted from the Bradley site and said she had “deep concerns” about what she described as the “unstable financial position” of UK Coal.

She said: “I am amazed that there appears to be this continued juggernaut for applications for opencast at all.”

The company insists the site will be fully restored after coal has been extracted and said it will create 38 well-paid jobs during the life of the site.

But Mrs Glass said: “I do not accept UK Coal’s assurance that an opencast would bring jobs to the area – they have been saying that for the last 15 years. I didn’t believe that then and I don’t believe it now”.

She said that the area had a long history of coal-mining and generations had lived with pit heaps and pollution.

She added: “Once the coal went, it was a green and pleasant land.

“The Pont Valley is one of the most beautiful valleys in the county – if that is taken away it will be years, if ever, before it is restored.

“I am not against opencast per se, but I am very much against opencast in this valley”.

The inquiry will continue next week.