LABOUR Shadow Environment Spokesman Frank Dobson laid down a 10-point plan for opencast mining when he visited Westhoughton yesterday.

Mr Dobson was there at the request of Ruth Kelly, Prospective Parliamentary Labour candidate for Bolton West, who has been dealing with complaints from local residents about blasting operations from the opencast site at Lower Leigh Road.

Residents have compared the twice-daily blasting to earthquake tremors and claim their homes are being shaken to the foundations.

It was Mr Dobson's second visit to the area, the first being before opencast mining started on the site more than three years ago, when he said that it would not have been allowed under a Labour Government. Mr Dobson said that an incoming Labour Government would change the law and practice to:

Prohibit opencast working except where it is of benefit to the local community and local environment;

Allow the rejection of planning applications for open casting where they may prejudice efforts to attract other investment;

Restrict repeated applications for the development of the same or similar sites;

Treat applications for extensions of existing workings as new applications;

Apply environmental assessment procedures;

Require future planning consents to set more strict and enforceable environmental standards;

Set strict and short time limits;

Tighten the rules to secure prompt and full restoration of sites;

Subject workings in areas covered by Interim Development Orders to normal planning and environmental controls;

Reduce the reliance on opencast coal as part of overall energy policy.

Mr Dobson said: "Opencast mining is a bad neighbour. We need to change the law. It is the Genghis Khan of bad neighbours. It's nasty, dirty, ugly and unhealthy."

He also said there are places were it cannot be ruled out entirely such as areas of dereliction where after two or three years the environment is improved, and only if the local community wants it.

"Certainly we would not have approved it in an area like this. It is part of people's quality of life that there is a nice green area," he added.

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