The Fight for South Crofty PDF Print E-mail

The South West of England Development Agency have started proceedings to compulsory purchase South Crofty. However, Cornish mining is far from finished as Colin Bradbury explains... The announcement by the South West Regional Development Agency In October 2006 that it was initiating a compulsory purchase order for 147 acres of land between Redruth and Camborne would have been big news under any circumstances. But the fact that on that land in Pool stand not only houses, small businesses and areas of derelict land, but also the South Crofty Mine site made it even more significant. To many, this appeared to put the final nail in the coffin of hopes for a renewal of mining at the site by the owners Baseresult who have owned South Crofty for more than five years. Not for the first time in the last 10 years, the local media rushed to write the mine’s obituary.

However, it would be very wrong to assume that the compulsory purchase order (CPO) is a done deal and that it is all over for South Crofty. This is not the first time that there has been an announcement of the intention to compulsorily purchase the mine site – for almost six years there have been similar threats, all of which have so far come to nothing. It remains to be seen whether this latest move is more serious.

To complicate the situation further, there is also a public inquiry under way right now on Baseresult’s own plans for the South Crofty site, plans which are very different to those put forward by the Regional Development Agency (RDA). If Baseresult wins its appeal that would throw a very big spanner into the works and would force the RDA into a drastic rethink of its strategy.

Since the announcement of the CPO, local newspapers and internet bulletin boards have been full of angry letters from councillors and ordinary residents opposing the plans. The CPO has stirred up a range of concerns. Not only about South Crofty which is clearly at the centre of the storm both geographically and emotionally, but also on the bigger question of whether this is another example of Cornwall being ruled by unelected bureaucratic elites who are remote from the ‘real’ people in the area.

For all the publicity surrounding South Crofty, the plans of the two main players in the drama are not well understood. What is clear is that Baseresult and the RDA have very different agendas. Baseresult want to re-start tin mining at South Crofty and to redevelop a large area of the surface by building new houses. They argue that if the RDA buy South Crofty it will put an end forever to any prospects of reviving tin mining on the site. The RDA, on the other hand, argues that Baseresult is all talk and that after more than five years they are no closer to extracting tin than they were when they first bought the mine. They want to incorporate South Crofty into the broader development plans for Camborne – Pool – Redruth (known in the planning jargon as “CPR”) and insist that the South Crofty site and the land around it are vital if new economic life is to be breathed into the area.

In order to understand what is likely to happen to South Crofty in the future, we really need to understand the agendas of the two organisations.

For many, the RDA are the real villains of the piece. Accused variously of being ‘snake oil salesmen’ and of engaging in a ‘Mugabe-style land grab’ they are caricatured as being an unelected quango, staffed by up-country bureaucrats trampling on decisions made by the elected representatives in district and county councils.

To understand who the RDA are and what do they want to do in Pool, a quick history lesson is in order. Back in 1998, a reorganisation of England’s local government structure led to the creation of 10 new administrative regions. Cornwall was incorporated into the largest of those, known as the South West Region. Within each region, an unelected (with the exception of London) Regional Assembly was established along with other associated bodies including Regional Development Agencies. The job of these RDA’s is, amongst other things, “to further economic development and regeneration” and to “ensure the long term economic success of the region”.

The ‘regeneration’ of the Camborne-Pool-Redruth area is regarded by the South West RDA as one of its main priorities in Cornwall and it is only in this context that their interest in South Crofty can be understood. Over the next 20 years, there are plans for the large scale construction of office and industrial space, of training and business ‘incubation’ units, health, educational and leisure facilities, new transport infrastructure and finally, a significant volume of new housing. In light of those plans, it is easy to understand why South Crofty, slap bang in the middle of the CPR area, is so important to them. The RDA wants to use the site for offices, a new health centre (to replace the old Carn Brea Leisure Centre) and green leisure space. They also want to run the East-West relief road, intended to take pressure off the A3047, across the site. Baseresult’s plans for mining and housing on the site do not fit in with that at all (the RDA, for example, wants Tuckingmill and Dolcoath to be the focus for housebuilding).

So the RDA argues that if Baseresult goes ahead with its project it will compromise plans for the whole of the CPR area. Pool is pivotal because of its position as a physical link between Camborne and Redruth and because it contains most of the area’s brownfield sites. Stephen Bohane, head of the RDA in Cornwall, insists that only a government body can deliver a “comprehensive and integrated approach to regeneration in the area”. The private sector would only be interested in building houses or retail units and without somebody like the RDA, no land would be developed for factory and business units, no health facilities would be built and there would certainly no new roads and other transport infrastructure.

So how do the claims of the RDA stack up? It is difficult to argue with the view that Cornwall needs a coordinated approach to planning and employment generation. Sadly there is little potential for a meaningful revival of traditional Cornish industries – “fish and tin” will never again be dominant employers – and it is highly unlikely that large scale businesses elsewhere in the UK will relocate their businesses to Cornwall. The focus on moving Cornwall to the forefront of ‘knowledge based industries as the most likely way to generate well paid employment does seem logical. You would also have to agree with them that there is a critical role for a government body in creating the infrastructure to make this happen. It is unfair to criticise the RDA, as some have on the grounds that their proposals for South Crofty will involve large amounts of taxpayer’s money while Baseresult’s project would be privately funded. One of the reasons that the RDA needs public money is that it is their job to fund essential projects – roads or new industrial parks for example – that no private company would be remotely interested in as these basic infrastructure projects offer no immediate financial return. If the RDA were proposing to build housing on the site as well, it too would be largely privately funded

In other areas, however, criticism of the RDA is much more understandable. The timing of the CPO, coming just a month after the County Council approved South Crofty’s ROMPs application, was truly terrible and it is not surprising that it looked to many like a panic measure to prevent a resumption of mining. It has fed suspicion that the powers-that-be don’t want the revival of ‘dirty’ industries like mining, that tin is not compatible with their vision for a ‘modern’ Cornwall. It has to be said that the RDA, County Council and others have sometimes not done themselves any favours with their public pronouncements. In 2003, Tim Williams, then Chairman of the CPR Regeneration company, commented that “there must remain a real question mark over the economic feasibility and indeed environmental desirability of large scale mining in this context in the modern era”. Implying that mining belongs to something other than the ‘modern era’ is not perhaps the way to win friends and influence people in Pool or Camborne.

The RDA’s Stephen Bohane agrees that the timing of the CPO announcement so soon after Baseresult were granted approval for a resumption of mining was unfortunate but entirely coincidental. He says that it was only in September 2006 that the RDA had the personnel in place who could deal with the CPO process (although the fact that they issued a CPO, in partnership with Restormel Borough Council, for the Tesco site in the centre of St Austell at the beginning of 2006 begs the question of which personnel were responsible for that one). Baseresult is certainly not convinced. They feel that CPO threats have been used tactically over the last few years to undermine their plans for South Crofty. Having a potential compulsory purchase hanging over the site can hardly be good for the confidence of the un-named financial backers whose investment running into tens of millions of pounds will be needed for the mine to re-open. So, although Baseresult’s Kevin Williams will not go so far as to accuse the RDA of persecuting the company, he does say that “We have heard talk of a vendetta, and sometimes it certainly feels like it, but we have no evidence beyond the coincidental’ release of CPO threats every time we announce some progress.”

The RDA has also stumbled with regard to their plans for the South Crofty site which are vague at best. According to the press release at the time of the CPO, land has been earmarked for “employment and leisure uses”. This “could” include new “health and leisure facilities” and “land for new East Hill Junction and the East West Link Road”. It is not surprising therefore that, when asked to do so at the public inquiry in November, the RDA were unable to identify on a map of South Crofty the proposed location for their projects. If they are going to meet their target of formally issuing the CPO in spring 2007, the RDA will need to put an awful lot more meat on the bones of their plans to have any chance of it being accepted. The RDA view on what it sees as the most appropriate use of the site appears also to have shifted. The insistence that Baseresult’s proposal for housing on the land is incompatible with the overall plan for Pool seems odd in the light of a letter sent by the CPR Regeneration Company to Baseresult in 2003 which stated that “The Board is keen to see a quality mixed development on the site, comprising principally housing and employment and leisure space.” In light of that Baseresult can hardly be blamed for subsequently coming up with a plan which is housing-based.

There is also the question of what impact the RDA’s plans would have on future mining at South Crofty. While they have no intention of extracting tin, the RDA would have an obligation not to permanently “sterilise” the minerals - to preserve access to the tin. Here too, there does not seem to have been very much work done to understand what this would entail. There has apparently been no consultation with Baseresult regarding the geology of the site and no technical investigation into what is involved in preserving access to the tin. Moreover, the RDA plans seem to involve relatively large scale buildings and a major road across the south of the site. Both of these would most likely involve pouring vast quantities of concrete into the underground voids which would raise all sorts of questions about whether the mine was effectively being ‘sterilised’.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the RDA strategy, there is no doubt that its use of a compulsory purchase order has raised wider questions about the apparent lack of accountability to local people. The RDA is technically correct in claiming that they have not trampled on local democracy since the elected members of both Kerrier District Council and the County Council have approved the CPO. However, the reality is that plans for the Camborne-Pool-Redruth area originate from organisations located many miles away in other counties and are produced by bodies which are only indirectly democratic. The RDA is responsible to the Exeter based South West Regional Assembly which has taken on long term economic planning functions for Cornwall that were previously the responsibility of the Cornwall County Council. Combine that with the fact that there are only 10 Cornish representatives out of a total of 119 on the Regional Assembly and it is hard to argue with the assertion that Cornwall’s say in its own affairs has been diluted.

As far as the RDA itself is concerned, its moral authority in claiming to speak for Cornwall is undermined by the fact that it is an almost entirely non-Cornish body with just 20 staff located in Truro. Though the RDA argues that Cornwall is not penalised in financial terms – Stephen Bohane claims that the county receives a “substantial” percentage of the overall budget for the South West, an amount “out of proportion to its population” – there remains a strong suspicion that priorities are set with an eye to the needs of the South West as a whole rather than those of Cornwall. This would not necessarily be a problem if Cornwall’s needs were the same as those of Exeter, Bristol or Gloucester but the fact is that the county is much poorer than the other areas in the region and faces unique problems.

In practical terms, this leads inevitably to a suspicion that there is another agenda behind the plans for the CPR area. Bernard Deacon of the Cornish Studies Institute and the Cornish Social and Economic Research Group (CoSERG) believes that housing is the key to the puzzle. Cornwall has experienced population growth well in excess of the UK average over the last 30 years and CoSERG believe that government policy is still based on the belief that population growth will be the engine of regeneration, despite evidence to the contrary. As Bernard Deacon points out, “plans to increase the population of the CPR area from 45,000 to 70,000 over the next 20 years have received no public consultation.” Inevitably, some will conclude that many of the new houses to be built in the area will not be for local people but for incomers. Interestingly, the South West Regional Spatial Strategy which provides planning guidance for local authorities in Cornwall, states that “at least 30%” of new housing should be affordable “with local authorities specifying rates up to 60% or higher in areas of greatest need”. Which leads one to wonder why Kerrier Council’s “Camborne Pool Redruth Area Action Plan 2005-2026” sets the minimum affordable housing level for new developments at just 25%. It’s not very comforting for young couples in Kerrier struggling to get on the housing ladder to find that 75% of the new properties being built are officially “unaffordable” (to them at least, if not to migrants from the south east or north of England). All of which leads one to wonder whether many of those new ‘knowledge’ based jobs will likely go to outsiders rather than local people.

So much for the RDA and their plans for South Crofty. But what of the mine’s current owners plans for the site? In a nutshell, Baseresult plans to move the mining operations to the southern part of the site around the Tuckingmill Decline. The land freed up to the north, around the iconic head-frame at New Cooks Kitchen shaft, would then be redeveloped with plans for around 450 new houses and a range of other buildings including a heritage centre. Outline plans for this development were submitted to Kerrier District Council in February 2004 and their failure to give a judgement on the proposals resulted in the public inquiry which began in November 2006.

While it might be easy to take pot-shots at the RDA, there are also important questions to be asked about Baseresult. Central to the issue is whether their plans to revive tin mining at South Crofty are economically viable. Many, including some former Crofty miners, believe that the costs of bringing the mine back into production would be astronomical and question the technical and financial capacity of Baseresult to pull it off.

This is where we enter a twilight zone of claim and counter claim but we do know that are two basic questions. How much will it cost to get the mine back into production and then on a long term basis, can Baseresult get tin out of the ground cheaply enough to sell it at a profit on the world market?

On the first question, estimates of the costs for restarting the mine vary widely – from about £30 million to £100 million. One of the main problems is that nobody can possibly know the real state of the underground workings at Crofty and therefore how much it will cost to make them safe for mining. The mine has been slowly flooding over the last eight years and there are hundreds of miles of tunnels which are now full of millions of gallons of water. In addition, it seems that there are no precedents in the mining industry for a project of this scale.

As far as the ongoing ability to sell Crofty tin at a profit, that obviously depends on the cost of extracting the ore and then price at which it can be sold on the world market. On the question of production costs, Baseresult say they will introduce modern mining methods which will reduce costs by up to 60% compared to the levels they were when the mine closed in 1998. Production is targeted to double from the peak levels of the 1990s but with a workforce some 30% smaller. Simply put, they say that South Crofty will be operated as a modern mine compared to the “antiquated” methods utilised ten years ago.

Not everybody agrees with that assessment, however. Any mention of “antiquated” mining methods to Kerrier District Councillor Mark Kaczmarek and other ex-Crofty miners gets a scathing response. “This was the most productive and efficient deep tin mine in the world” argues Kaczmarek. “South Crofty in the 90s in the lower levels had a great deal of modern machinery…miles of heavy duty electric cables and transformer stations to serve this modern mine had been installed.” He is also deeply sceptical about the ability of Baseresult to access the tin they are apparently targeting. “If Baseresult intends to access the untapped lodes which they have identified…using the Tuckingmill Decline they would have to develop and deepen it 4.5 kilometres. Something Rio Tinto, one of the largest mining companies pulled out of in the mid 80s when the tin price was much higher than it is today and energy costs and environmental issues were not at the forefront as they are today.” While Kaczmarek, who teaches Camborne School of Mines students at their test mine in Troon, would love to see South Crofty working again, he has little time for claims that Baseresult will be mining tin any time soon, saying “I’ve broken more ground at Troon in the last five years than Baseresult have ever moved at South Crofty.”

On the question of the tin price, the news is generally positive with a good long term outlook for the metal. The price having doubled in pound sterling terms over the last three years. Unfortunately, Baseresult are unwilling to give an indication of the level of the tin price they would need in future to break even.

One thing that has puzzled many observers is why, having owned the mine for almost 6 years, Baseresult is still (by their own estimate) 2 to 4 years from resuming tin production. The company’s argument is that they have been delayed by Cornwall County Council’s demands that they submit what is known as a Review of Mineral Planning Permissions (ROMPs) – essentially the terms under which the mine can operate. Baseresult spent some three and a half years working on the submissions, which they say “required all our time, energy and resources” . The County Council, on the other hand states that the ROMPs process didn’t prevent the resumption of mining and that “because the mine has been classified as active the owners could have recommenced mining at any time under its existing permissions whilst the ROMPs application was being considered.”

As usual there’s some truth on both sides of the argument. Certainly, the basic legal permissions for Baseresult to extract tin were in place, but it’s not that simple. Baseresult’s backers, faced with the enormous financial commitment required to reopen the mine, would understandably be nervous about putting up those funds while there was any doubt about any potential conditions attached to working the mine. Most importantly, the planning permission needed to relocate the mining operations to the southern part of the site and then to redevelop the land around New Cook’s Kitchen shaft could not realistically be sought until the position on the ROMPs situation was clarified. So, while Baseresult could technically have pushed ahead with work on re-opening the mine, it is clear that the bureaucratic demands placed on them have slowed the process down significantly.

The plan to relocate mining operations around the Tuckingmill Decline has raised eyebrows in some quarters. There are questions about the feasibility of squeezing the large amount of new infrastructure - including a mill, a water treatment plant, offices and car parking for the miners - into an area of just 5 acres. This was not helped by Baseresult’s unwillingness at the public inquiry to provide any details of their plans in this respect. They argue that some facilities could be located underground to save space on the surface, but while this would be technically feasible the general consensus is that it would also be hugely expensive.

Clearly, the Baseresult plans in relation to mining raise many technical questions. And there are others questions, namely over ownership and finance. Baseresult has, with some justification, accused the RDA of not being transparent. But there is also a case for saying that Baseresult themselves remain something of an enigma. For a start, it is not clear who actually owns the company. Public documents reveal that the main backers are a Bermuda based company called Stone Cladding Consultants who, according to Baseresult’s Alan Shoesmith are “entrepreneurs persuaded by the merits of re-establishing tin production in Cornwall.” Beyond that, they are not prepared to divulge any further details. This has led some to question whether the funds needed for the investment in Crofty are really there. Unable to reveal details of their backers, Baseresult are in no position to answer these questions with any hard evidence.

So, where do we go from here? The first question is whether the RDA will go through with their proposed compulsory purchase order. This is not the first time that the RDA has announced their intention to acquire South Crofty through a CPO. In fact, it has been something of a recurring theme for the last few years, particularly since 2003. But on each previous occasion, very little has happened and the issue has gone to sleep. Nevertheless, this time it does appear that they are serious. This is a much more ambitious scheme as they are talking not just about the 33 acres of the South Crofty site but also an additional 114 acres in the surrounding area and, for the first time, they are discussing the timetable for the legal action that will be required for them to acquire the land. The RDA must be aware that their credibility will be shot to pieces if they don’t follow up on their CPO threat this time.

We can therefore expect the CPO to be issued officially in spring 2007, assuming that the RDA can put together a sufficiently detailed case that the order is in the public interest in time. A public inquiry would take place at the end of 2007 and, based on the report that emerges from that inquiry, the Secretary of State would make a ruling at some point in 2008. Meanwhile, the public inquiry on Baseresult’s own plans for South Crofty will conclude in January 2007 and a ruling will be expected by the middle of the year. If Baseresult do win the appeal and get planning permission for their housing development, the price that the RDA would have to pay for the site will skyrocket.

So, this is definitely not the end for South Crofty and it is likely that we won’t know the fate of Cornwall’s last working tin mine for at least another two years. One thing is certain though, there will be plenty more twists and turns on the way.

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