§ Mr. ToddTo ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if he will make a statement on progress on the identification, distribution and preservation of(a) coal and (b) non-coal records which have been the responsibility of the Coal Authority. [85901]
§ Mr. BattleThe Coal Authority owns a range of records related to coal-mining and the coal resource that are relevant to its activities; in particular, the records of the Coal Commission, which consist of the Coal Holdings Register compiled following the Coal Act 1937 and 26,500 associated claim files; and over one million geological records (principally borehole logs) and 20,000 magnetic tapes of seismic data. It also maintains, and provides public access to circa 100,000 coal-mine abandonment plans owned by the Health and Safety Executive, together with 2,500 boxes of ancillary records (notebooks and calculation ledgers used by surveyors to produce the original plans). The Authority does not hold, other than on an incidental basis, non-coal records.
The Authority is currently considering in co-operation with other interested parties and those requiring access to the information where these records should be housed in the future. It is the Authority's intention to retain the records of the Coal Commission. The geological records and seismic data are in the process of being transferred to the British Geological Survey (BGS) centre at Keyworth, Nottinghamshire, to create a coherent collection of such records for all minerals. The Authority will shortly go to consultation on where the originals of the HSE's coal-mine abandonment plans, which are currently kept at the Bretby site, should be housed. It is the Authority's intention to retain micro-film copies of the plans if they are transferred to another record-holder.