UK Coal Gets Go Ahead to Evict Eco-Warriors
Posted on: Sunday, 20 July 2008, 00:00 CDT
By Aly Walsh
A Mining firm has won a court case to evict a group of campaigners from the site of a planned opencast mine.
Climate-change protesters from the Leave It In The Ground group barricaded themselves into a derelict two-storey building at Prospect Farm, in Bell Lane, Smalley, last month.
They hoped their presence would make it impossible for UK Coal to begin opencast mining at the 334-acre site.
But yesterday, at Derby County Court, a judge ordered the group to move out immediately.
Following the hearing, protester Peter Nelson, who was representing the group in court, said: "This is the result we expected but UK Coal should expect a very lengthy eviction.
"We have fortified the building and got an underground tunnel system, which people will crawl down when the bailiffs come."
He said they believed that this method of protesting was the only one that was going to have any impact on UK Coal.
The controversial plans to extract more than a million tonnes of coal were first put forward by UK Coal in 2004.
Campaigners fought to try and stop the mining and a legal battle followed after Derbyshire County Council refused to grant permission.
But the Government eventually gave the company the go-ahead for four-and-a-half years of mining. And last August, the county council decided to not go ahead with a High Court appeal against the decision.
UK Coal plans to move machinery on to the site the summer and begin extracting coal in the autumn.
The court heard how the protesters' main defence to the eviction application was that it had been served by a different company than the one that owned the land.
Harworth Estates (Agricultural Lands) Ltd - the property arm of UK Coal - had made the application, whereas the group claimed that it was actually Harworth Mining International Ltd which, it said, owned the land.
But the campaigners' case collapsed when the company managed to prove it had legally changed its name.
Mr Nelson asked Judge James Orrell if they could be given some time to move out.
But the judge said he did not have the power to do that. However, he said he believed there would probably be some delay in the bailiffs going to the site.
Following the hearing, Stuart Oliver, a spokesman for UK Coal, said that now the eviction notice had been granted, there were certain administrative procedures that needed to be followed.
He said: "We would hope that the people who are illegally squatting at Prospect Farm would now respect the court's decision and leave before the need to get bailiffs to evict them is necessary."
(c) 2008 Derby Evening Telegraph. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.
Source: Derby Evening Telegraph
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