Public body to be set up to protect people in Wales from dangers of coal tips

A series of concerns have been raised about the law

A new law which will set up a public body to ensure Wales' coal tips do not threaten the safety of people living near them has received unanimous backing in the Senedd. The Disused Mine and Quarry Tips (Wales) Bill will update outdated legislation from the late 1960s.

Concerns about the condition of Wales' coal tips came to light following a landslide at a disused coal tip in Tylorstown in Rhondda Cynon Taf in February 2020. It emerged there was no standard categorisation or list of who was responsible for the 2,573 coal tips in Wales.

The Welsh Government ordered a review of the safety of coal tips across Wales, and inspections and maintenance of tips with the potential to impact public safety. For our free daily briefing on the biggest issues facing the nation, sign up to the Wales Matters newsletter here

It found 360 are in the most serious categories (D and C). In January, some were reclassified, you can see those here.

There was then another major slip in November 2024, when heavy rainfall during Storm Bert contributed to a tip slip in Cwmtilliery in Blaenau Gwent which meant 40 houses had to be evacuated due to deep slurry and debris running down the hillside.

The Welsh Government's subsequent law about coal tips has now cleared its first hurdle in the Senedd. The main aim of it is to set up the Disused Tips Authority for Wales, a public body which will be tasked to "ensure that disused tips do not threaten human welfare by reason of their instability".

That will be operational from April 1, 2027 and will be responsible for compiling and maintaining a register of disused tips, and have a duty to monitor tips, however there is no detail about the frequency or nature of this monitoring.

While the bill did pass its first stage in the Senedd unanimously, there have been concerns raised during the scrutiny process before that, namely that there is a lack of detail in it.

Under the current proposals, the register of disused tips will only contain those tips which in the authority’s view are a threat, or a potential threat, to human welfare by reason of instability.

The climate change committee called for the register to also include those disused tips that have been assessed but not categorised.

There is also a lack of statutory management plans for tips.

There were also fears raised that the bill could inadvertently stimulate re-mining of disused coal tips if owners are told they face expensive bills to make them safe, private remediation companies may bring forward proposals to remediate tips, at no cost to the owner, in return for selling the extracted “waste coal”. That was shot down by Wales' climate minister Huw Irranca-Davies.

Speaking in the Senedd, Mr Irranca-Davies said: "The bill will bring about significant improvements to the current regime under the Mines And Quarries (Tips) Act 1969, in particular establishing a lower threshold for intervention and providing the authority with appropriate powers of entry to any land where necessary for the exercise of certain functions. It also places on a firm legislative footing the key elements of the new management regime, such as a register of categorised disused tips, which is the foundation upon which the rest of the provisions in the bill are built."

Climate change committee chair Llyr Gruffydd said more than half the committee's recommendations were to ensure the new regime is "robust, effective and instils public confidence" but said there is a "recurring theme" about a "lack of detail".

He said it was "unsatisfactory" that detail will come in guidance, rather than the bill, as "it means that the Welsh Government’s policy intentions are not clear". He said the fact it will not be in place in 2027 will also mean it is the government formed after the Senedd election in 2026 which will determine the detail of the policy.

"Of course, guidance does have a role to play in ensuring that the effective implementation of the Bill takes place, but it should not be used to fill in important policy details that we would expect ordinarily to be set out in legislation, in order to, of course, provide proper democratic oversight," he said.

Mike Hedges, who chairs the legislation committee, said: "Our main concern with the bill is that the Welsh Government is relying too heavily on the use of guidance to deliver the bill’s objectives. We therefore concluded that there was an inappropriate balance between provisions that will be on the face of the bill or left to regulations versus what is to be left to guidance."

Finance committee chair Peredur Owen Griffiths raised concerns about the financial information which was provided by the Welsh Government and costs of staff and where they would come from. "Although we heard assurances from the Deputy First Minister that there are sufficient funds to undertake all the work required to make land that contains a disused tip safe, we are concerned that these funds might be allocated on a first come, first served basis," he said. However, he said Mr Irranca-Davies had said applications for higher rated tips are to be prioritised over those for lower rated tips.