The site was a former chemical works at the south edge of Whitehaven, near the shaft of Haig Colliery, which had stopped mining coal in March 1986. The proposal was to sink a new deep mine beneath the Irish Sea — the first in England in more than three decades — and extract coking coal for steelmaking for 25 years. Backers said it would bring 500 jobs to a deprived corner of West Cumbria. Opponents said it would lock Britain into more coal at exactly the moment the country had promised to stop burning it. Both sides were partly right, and that is why the argument lasted as long as it did.
West Cumbria Mining, owned by Australia-based EMR Capital, framed the project as practical patriotism. The UK imports around six million tonnes of coal a year for coke production at steel plants, and none of it comes from Europe; most arrives from Australia or the United States. Why not source it from beneath the Irish Sea instead? The company projected 500 jobs, a 50-year mine life, possible reserves over 750 million tonnes, and a community fund running for a decade. 85 per cent of the output would be exported, mostly by rail to Redcar Bulk Terminal on Teesside. A 600-acre solar farm was planned alongside, to cover roughly 40 per cent of the mine's electricity needs. In March 2019, Cumbria County Council's planning committee voted unanimously in favour, citing 'the desperate need for jobs, particularly in deprived wards close to the proposed new mine.' In February 2021, forty Conservative MPs signed a letter urging the council to approve.
Climate scientists and environmental campaigners were less impressed. Greta Thunberg said approval revealed the true emptiness of 'net zero 2050' as a target. James Hansen, the former NASA Goddard Institute director who first warned Congress about climate change in 1988, called the approval 'contemptuous disregard for the future of young people.' Sir Robert Watson, an atmospheric scientist who has worked on ozone depletion and global warming since the 1980s, called the project 'absolutely ridiculous.' Cumbria MP Tim Farron called it 'a complete disaster for our children's future.' The nuclear-safety campaigners at Radiation Free Lakeland coined the slogan that stuck: 'Keep Cumbrian coal in the hole.' Lord Deben, then chair of the UK's Committee on Climate Change, wrote formally to Secretary of State Robert Jenrick rebuking him for letting the planning permission stand. Cumbria Action for Sustainability published a 2021 report proposing well-paid green jobs as an alternative.
The planning saga ran for years. Cumbria County Council approved the project, then approved it again, then approved it a third time in October 2020. The Secretary of State first declined to intervene, then in March 2021 called the application in for review. Michael Gove, succeeding Jenrick at the relevant department, granted consent in December 2022 — subject to legal challenges. Those challenges worked their way through the courts. In September 2024, the High Court quashed the 2022 approval on the grounds that downstream greenhouse-gas emissions from burning the coal had not been considered when the decision was made. The Labour Secretary of State who took office after the 2024 general election concurred with that view. On 31 March 2025, West Cumbria Mining formally withdrew its application. The mine would not be built.
What does West Cumbria do now? That is the question the headlines moved on from. Friends of the Earth and South Lakes Action on Climate Change welcomed the withdrawal and called for investment in well-paid, low-carbon jobs to take the place of the coking-coal ones that did not materialise. The Cumberland Coalfield, which fed Whitehaven's prosperity for two centuries, remains underground. Haig Colliery's preserved buildings sit on the cliff above the proposed site as a kind of monument to an industry that ended, then almost restarted, then did not. The argument over Woodhouse was never really about one mine. It was about how a country closes a chapter — and whether the next chapter, whatever it brings to the families who needed those 500 jobs, will arrive in time.
The proposed Woodhouse Colliery site lies at 54.53N, 3.60W on the former Marchon chemical works estate, just south of Whitehaven town centre and adjacent to Haig Colliery on the cliff edge. The site is unmissable from low altitude: cleared industrial ground above the Irish Sea, with the Whitehaven Georgian grid to the north and St Bees Head's sandstone cliffs about 2 nm south-west. Nearest field is Carlisle Lake District (EGNC) some 30 nm north-east. The Irish Sea offshore from the site holds the geology West Cumbria Mining intended to extract — the Cumberland Coalfield's carboniferous seams up to 550 m below sea bed.