PUPILS from Ysgol Bryn Onnen delivered letters to Torfaen Council objecting to them forming a legal agreement with Glamorgan Power over the proposed opencast mine just 120 metres from their classrooms.

Greeting them in the council chamber was Cllr Gwyneira Clark and chief planning officer, Duncan Smith.

George Johnson spoke on behalf of the pupil council highlighting concerns they have about the plans for opencast mining.

He said: “It will make learning in the class hard as pupils with asthma will be coughing and it will be noisy.

“Trucks will stop school buses getting to school on time. Also people will stop sending their children to the school and the school won't be very good.”

The pupils handed letters, as did the school governors and parents with concerns that the planned mine sits 60 metres from houses, despite Welsh government guidelines stating opencast works should be at least 500m away.

Parent Liz Owen said: “We feel the school has not been considered and children will spend most of their days breathing in the dust.

“We do not understand why there would be government guidelines that have been ignored.”

Cllr Clark said: “My concerns about Varteg remain the same. Rightly so, people are worried about noise and dust. I hope the decision by the minister will be favourable to us.”

The chairman of the governing body Boyd Hackley-Green said he was proud of the pupils who took the time to write the letter.

He added: “The opencast would bring about the decimation of the school along with the Welsh language in the north of Torfaen.

“There is no provision to move, replace or support Ysgol Bryn Onnen should the opencast go ahead, and this would not even be looked at unless numbers fall below 100, but the school would fail long before that number is reached.”

Earlier this year, Welsh Government-appointed inspector Clive Nield recommended to the minister that the appeal from Glamorgan Power, against Torfaen council’s rejection of plans to extract 256,000 tonnes of coal from Varteg, be allowed.

The decision had lain with previous minister John Griffiths, who sent out a letter stating that he was “minded to allow” the plans subject to an acceptable Section 106 Legal Undertaking to ensure the restoration and aftercare of the land once coal recovery had been removed.

Due to a Welsh Government cabinet reshuffle, the decision has now fallen to Carl Sargeant and campaigners are keen to make their voices heard.

Glamorgan Power have now made an application to modify the planning obligation by submitting a proposed replacement for the undertaking, which is on the Torfaen website.

Any comments on the modified undertaking can be sent to Planning & Public Protection, Ty Blaen Torfaen, Panteg Way, New Inn, NP4 0LS or by emailing planning@torfaen.gov.uk quoting Ref 04/P/09210 13/P/00461 by November 22.

The modified agreement will be considered at a special meeting of council on December 3.

The pupils’ letter of protest

The letter written by the student school council read: "We love Ysgol Bryn Onnen and we don't want an open cast mine. The school makes us feel like a family and the mine will destroy our bond. We do not want the coal mine because it will be noisy and disrupt us when we are doing work in class. It will interfere with classes and the dust will make us cough. The dust will affect people with asthma.

In some of our classrooms the walls are thin and we can sometimes hear cars, so when there are noisy trucks we won't be able to hear our teacher. Trucks will slow school buses down so we will be late.

If there is an open cast mine nobody will send their children to the school. Please do not carry out open cast mining by our school."