CEGB wants to use more hauliers
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MORE POWER station coal will go by road, if the Central Electricity Generating Board has its way.
As a South Yorkshire council stepped up its tight to stop hauliers from taking over work from British Rail, the CEGB confirmed to CM that it is already having discussions with local councils in the South Midlands and North-East England about its plans to shift more coal by road.
Ultimately, it hopes to open up discussions with councils about using their roads to take coal into all 45 of its coal fired power stations. And its general policy now is to try to increase from around 12 per cent the proportion of its 80 million tonnes of coal which goes by road.
At a local level, Barnsley council leader Ronald Rigby told CM that he wants a meeting with the National Coal Board and British Rail to attempt to reduce the volume of lorry traffic running into the new South Side coal washing complex at Grimethorpc colliery.
Where the NCB has built rail loading facilities, it has also built concrete ramping to load lorries at South Side, he said. Lorries are being loaded
within three minutes and sent on their way to power stations in Staffordshire, Coventry and the Leicester area.
Following a meeting with South Yorkshire County Council, the National Union or Railwaymen and the mineworkers' union, Barnsley council set up a lorry count in the area and took the evidence to the NCB and BR.
"The NUR pointed out what was happening, and that it was happening in other parts of Yorkshire. They say the policy of British Rail is to lose traffic and we've got to investigate all this," Rigby said. BR has denied that it has such a policy.