MPs question progress of £1bn coalfields revival plan

MPs say the challenge is huge but progress has been slow

A £1bn government project to regenerate the sites of former coal mines in England has been poorly co-ordinated and lacks vision, MPs say.

The Commons Public Accounts Committee said £630m had been spent on converting 54 former pits for new commercial uses.

But MPs said it was unclear how many jobs had been created while training in local communities had not been tailored to the new work opportunities emerging.

Ministers said 150,000 former coal miners have retrained or got new jobs.

Officials said they were "disappointed" by the criticism in the report, saying it contradicted a separate analysis by the National Audit Office which argued that many former coal mines had been transformed.

Between 1981 and 2004, 121 pits closed across Yorkshire, the Midlands, the North East, North West and Kent with the loss of about 190,000 jobs.

In 1998, the then Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott outlined a £1.1bn strategy to de-contaminate former mining sites and make them suitable for future residential or commercial development.

The closure of pits has left a legacy of derelict land, some of it highly contaminated, which is low in economic potential Edward Leigh, Public Accounts Committee chairman

Assessing the progress of the project, the all-party committee said 54 sites had been brought back into working use, creating 2,700 new houses and a base for more than 3,000 community projects.

However, it said it was "extremely doubtful" whether the scheme, one of the largest regenerations projects in the UK and overseen by the Department for Communities and Local Government, was delivering value for money.

It said there had been no proper analysis of how many jobs had been created - it believes the figure could range from 8,000 to 16,000 - while there was little evidence that these jobs would not have been created anyhow without public money being invested.

'Enormous challenge'

Details of how many local residents had benefited from the project were sketchy, it said, while progress had taken longer than planned.

"The challenge is undoubtedly enormous," Conservative MP Edward Leigh, who chairs the committee, said.

"The closure of 124 pits since 1981 has left a legacy of derelict land, some of it highly contaminated, which is low in economic potential and of high unemployment allied with a weak culture of enterprise.

"Despite spending £630m, the department does not really know what improvement it has made to the lives of the people living in these areas."

Mr Leigh urged officials to co-ordinate the project more effectively, to involve other government departments more closely in it and to ensure there were strict benchmarks to judge its progress by.

"The department still has £450m to spend. It must start afresh, with a proper assessment of the needs of former coalfield areas...and a over-arching strategy," he added.

Regeneration Minister Ian Austin said much progress had been made over the past decade.

"Twenty five years ago entire communities were devastated by the coal industry's collapse. Now whole communities have been revived with almost 150,000 people getting new jobs or retraining," he said.

"There is still more to do and we will continue to make sure all the funding brings new jobs and hope to communities devastated by the closure of the pits."