Ffos-Y-Fran meeting will be in secret

Mar 5 2008 by Jackie Bow, South Wales Echo

COUNCILLORS in Merthyr Tydfil are due to meet behind closed doors to consider a report about an opencast mining scheme today.

The public will be excluded while full council receives information from deputy chief executive and director of customer corporate services, Gareth Chapman, on the agenda item labelled ‘Ffos-Y-Fran and enforcement action’.

Also on the agenda is an exempt item listed as ‘Failure of the Welsh Assembly Government to revoke the planning permission for the opencast coal mining operation at Ffos-Y-Fran, granted on April 2005’. A High Court claim has been lodged against the council over the mine.

In a statement last month, solicitor Paul Stookes, representing neighbouring resident Elizabeth Condron, said: “A claim has been issued against Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council because it is unwilling to enforce a planning condition that there should be no excavation beyond a certain distance which is, at its closest, 70 metres from people’s homes.

“Such a failure to enforce the condition will allow the operators to excavate right up to the site boundary, which is as close as 35 metres from local residents. We consider this to be unlawful and in the absence of agreement by the council to enforce, are having to ask the High Court to intervene.”

The Assembly debated plans yesterday for 500-metre buffer zones around future opencast sites.