UK Coal’s Pounds 1bn Property Windfall Will Boost Jobs

By TOM MCGHIE

UK COAL, Britain’s biggest coalmining company, is sitting on property valued at Pounds 1 billion, boosted by planning approvals on developments that could create 80,000 jobs over the next ten years.

The figure, about Pounds 200 million higher than previous estimates, emerged in a recent internal study of its 49,000 acres of land.

The reassessment of the property values means that UK Coal has decided to abandon plans to split the business into property and mining companies and sell off the property interests.

Jon Lloyd, UK Coal’s property director, said selling the property empire, which was being funded by the increasingly profitable mining operation, did not make sense.

‘It may be worth considering years down the line, but not now,’ he said.

Shares in UK Coal have been trading at a ten-year high on takeover speculation and expectations of rising property values, closing last week at 550p, giving it a stock market value of Pounds 862 million.

UK Coal believes that forthcoming planning approval to develop its land bank and the speedy success of its property redevelopment programme has dramatically transformed its fortunes.

It reckons it can create at least 80,000 jobs over the next ten years by building 16,000 homes and creating huge business parks.

Lloyd told Financial Mail: ‘We have valuable property up and down the M1 and A1. It is safe to say that our property bank is now worth Pounds 1 billion. It is

important to realise that we are self-financing all the development work and making houses in a sustainable way.

‘What makes me particularly proud is that we are creating jobs in areas of high unemployment. Some of the miners who were forced out of work by the closure of their pits have something to look forward to.’ Typical of the sort of development taking place is the transformation of Orgreave Colliery’s 700-acre site near Sheffield.

It was closed in 1985, a year after the disastrous miners’ strike when its coke works was the backdrop to a notorious battle between Arthur Scargill’s miners and police.

The site has been razed, millions of tons of earth have been moved and cleaned and even the River Rother was moved 60 yards to make room for a huge housing and commercial development.

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