Find out more about coal tip safety

As work continues to ensure the safety of former Welsh coal tips, a range of new information has been made available to help keep people informed.

Full details on what action Welsh Government is taking through its coal tip safety programme is available at the Welsh Government website, and you can view a YouTube video in both English or Welsh.

A dedicated email address and hotline have also been set up, and anyone who wants to report concerns about coal tip safety can now do so via tips@coal.gov.uk or by calling 0800 021 9230.

In Bridgend County Borough, residents have received assurances that former industrial sites are being regularly inspected and monitored, and that only minor issues have been identified.

The council is continuing to work closely alongside the Coal Tip Safety Taskforce in their assessment of more than 2,000 former Welsh mining sites.

At each site, ground inspections have taken place to identify whether any works may be necessary, and a set of nationally agreed ‘risk status’ criteria has been applied to evaluate what the likely impact would be in the event of a land slip, collapse or any other loss of structural integrity.

This has resulted in sites being classed within A, B, C or D categories, with D noting locations where any disruption would have the most impact – for example, because they might be situated alongside a public highway.

The taskforce has confirmed that while the majority of Welsh coal tips are now in private ownership, others remain under the management of the Coal Authority, Natural Resources Wales and local councils.

Within Bridgend County Borough, 118 former coal tips have been identified, 31 of which have been classed as either C or D.

These categories do not indicate how dangerous a site may or may not be. Instead, they reflect what potential impact a collapse, slide or slip might have. This means that a former mining site running alongside a main road would be placed in a higher category that one located in a remote part of the county borough as the potential disruption that any slippage might cause would be far greater.

While the new classification system has been in place since the storms of 2020, we previously used a local system of monitoring which enabled us to manage tips within Bridgend County Borough. As a result, we have a well-established regime in place for carrying out regular inspections. Thankfully, only minor maintenance issues, such as ensuring that vegetation is removed from watercourses, have proven to be necessary, and to date, no significant issues have been found which require further or urgent attention.

Residents can be assured that Bridgend County Borough Council is continuing to work alongside Welsh Government, the Coal Authority, Natural Resources Wales and the Coal Tip Safety Taskforce to monitor all local sites, and to ensure that they remain safe. We are also supporting the call for UK Government to work closely with Welsh Government, and to allocate funding necessary for ensuring that former coal tips located all across Wales remain safe for the future.

Councillor Stuart Baldwin, Cabinet Member for Communities