Ex miner claims Whitehaven's 'soul' could return with opening of new mine
There is a legal challenge against the new site opening.
Last updated 25th Apr 2024
An ex miner is telling us the opening of a new coaking coal mine would bring back the 'soul' of Whitehaven.
It's as a new report has found that forty years after the Miners’ Strike began many former coalfield communities still face a shortage of quality jobs.
The State of the Coalfields 2024 is the third report commissioned by the Coalfields Regeneration Trust (CRT) from the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research at Sheffield Hallam University, following studies in 2014 and 2019.
The report found that although there has been substantial job growth in the former coalfields, the rate of growth has been far slower than in the main regional cities.
The most recent figures show that in the former coalfields there are only 57 employee jobs for every 100 residents of working age, compared to a national average of 73 jobs per 100, and 88 per 100 in the main regional cities.
The shortage of local jobs means that many coalfield residents are now having to commute to neighbouring towns and cities.
The quality of jobs in the former coalfields is also below the standard in other areas. More than half of employed residents work in manual jobs. Average hourly earnings are 6-7 per cent below the national average.
This is something ex-miner David Cradduck believes happened in Whitehaven when the last mine closed.
He said:
"Half the workforce in the town moved to Sellafield (nuclear site) where the good jobs were, the well paid jobs. The rest of the staff existed on minimum wage and unskilled jobs."
But with the recent announcement of a potential new mine for coaking coal opening in Whitehaven, David believes there is hope yet for the former colliery town.
He added:
"There's possibly 500 men going there. Obviously not as many men as in my day because it was more labor intensive back then. Then there's all the industry around it. It wasn't just the pits at the time it was all the support industry like little engineering firms.
"I can see Whitehaven getting it's soul back. The soul went out of the town. There was a lot of pride in people when you got one of these good jobs."
Overall, the report argues, these changes mean that many of the young and better qualified are having to move away from the communities in which they grew up to seek better opportunities elsewhere.
This leaves a population in the former coalfields which is generally older and in poorer health, with 7 per cent of all residents saying their health is ‘bad or very bad’ and more than 10 per cent claiming disability benefits.
In total almost 600,000 coalfield residents – one in six of all adults of working age – claim out-of-work benefits of one kind or another.
The potential new mine in Whitehaven is subject to legal challenge by South Lakes Against Climate Change and Friends of the Earth.
On their website they claim the reason for a legal challenge as concerns over greenhouse gas emissions, global leadership, low carbon steel being the future, high sulphur content, job concerns and concerns over nearby ancient woodland.