CUMBRIAN MPs will receive letters from environmental activists this week, urging them to take a stand against the West Cumbrian coal mine.

As crunch time looms for West Cumbria Mining’s planned development off the coast of Whitehaven, Friends of the Earth campaigners are converging on the constituency offices of MPs.

Campaigners visited Trudy Harrison’s office on Wednesday, submitting a letter urging the Copeland MP to oppose West Cumbria Mining’s plan for a coal mine on the former Marchon site.

Groups of Friends of the Earth campaigners will attend Mark Jenkinson’s Maryport constituency office and Simon Fell’s office in Barrow on Friday.

Opposition groups believe now is not the right time to approve new coal mines as the UK marches towards net zero.

Co-ordinator Ruth Balogh said: “Many people in West Cumbria are against this mine, and we need our representatives to grasp this. Our MPs also need to grasp the severity of the climate crisis and the role the mine would have in worsening it.

"The floods we've suffered from in West Cumbria are directly attributable to climate change. And the mine's end-use emissions won't obey national boundaries, they'll affect us all. The 'death knell' of coal hailed by the Prime Minister applies to all coal mines, this mine included.”

But supporters of the mine say that a metallurgical coal mine, used for steel production, is not as harmful to the environment as one extracting thermal coal for fuel.

They say that there will always be a demand for steel and the coal to produce it.

Trudy Harrison, MP for Copeland, said: “I have consistently supported the application for Woodhouse Colliery and spoke in favour at the Planning Inquiry in September.

“Rather than importing coking coal and the environmental impact this involves, the mine would give us a domestic source of coking coal that is necessary to feed our steel requirements that are building the technologies powering us to net-zero.”