Miners’ strike: Coal towns falling further behind – charity

Former coal-mining areas are falling further behind the rest of Britain decades on from pit closures, a charity has warned.

Forty years after the 1984 miners’ strike, the Coalfields Regeneration Trust (CRT) said communities had been “let down” by a lack of investment since the loss of an industry which employed more than 220,000 people.

It comes as a survey commissioned by the BBC suggested 73% of people living in former mining towns and villages felt they had seen little or no progress on levelling up – the Conservatives’ flagship policy aimed at reducing regional inequalities.

The government said it had committed £15bn to improve the lives of “everyone, everywhere in the UK” through levelling-up projects.

The BBC’s poll of 2,426 people in former coalfield communities in England, Wales and Scotland found 57% felt there was a lack of suitable jobs in their area.

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Darren Wood, 49, who lives in the ex-mining village of Goldthorpe, near Barnsley in South Yorkshire, said he had been looking for work for five years but “never hears anything back” about his applications.

“You can apply for stuff, check your emails and you don’t get any replies. They don’t get back to you, not even a ‘no, sorry you’re not suitable or been successful’. It does grind you down,” said the single father-of-two.