CAMPAIGNERS fighting plans for an opencast mine in the North-East have staged a protest walk.

The Pont Valley Network held the hike today (Sunday, September 21) ahead a second public inquiry over plans to opencast land at Bradley near Leadgate, Consett in County Durham.

In February 2011, Durham County Council refused permission for UK Coal permission to extract 556,000 tonnes of coal from the land and the decision was upheld by a planning inspector after a public inquiry the following autumn.

But a High Court judge later quashed the inspector's decision on the grounds that it was "unreasonable and perverse and he had misunderstood Government planning guidance".

A second public inquiry will therefore start on Tuesday, October 7 in Leadgate Workingmen's Club.

Network chairman David Marrs, who took part in the walk in the countryside surrounding Dipton Community Centre, said: “Many in the local area think this threat of opencast has gone away, but this is not the case.

“They cannot believe that this matter is still unresolved. We have won the argument against this opencast application at every turn of the planning process, but a High Court judge referred it back to a second public inquiry after UK Coal appealed the decision.

“We are leading this walk to raise awareness that we still have another fight to win.”

The public inquiry is scheduled to run for three weeks and residents able to attend the inquiry may speak if they wish.

The two days set aside for this are October 9 and 15.

A spokesman for UK Coal Surface Mines said: “We look forward to the opportunity of putting forward our case as we firmly believe we have developed an environmentally acceptable way of recovering this good quality coal.”