A COALMINING company that scarred the Leicestershire countryside was accused yesterday of failing to cough up cash it had promised for the restoration of the area.

UK Coal signed an environmental “bond” with Leicestershire County Council as part of an agreement granting planning permission for the operation at a site known as Minorca, near Mesham.

The firm had agreed to pay £5.1 million for restoration of the site once the coal had been extracted, but the council said yesterday that UK Coal had missed payments and owed £700,000.

Councillors were set to meet yesterday to discuss what action to take.

“The restoration bond is required to provide a monetary fallback that the county council could draw upon in the event that the site is not satisfactorily restored at some future point,” said council chief executive John Sinnott.

He said that the £700,000 towards the restoration bond — bringing total payments so far to £2.8m — remained outstanding.

Steve Leary of the Minorca Opencast Protest Group said it was the second time payments had been missed.

Opencast mining — quarrying where coal seams break the surface — is cheap and highly profitable, but it causes severe environmental damage in the form of scarring the countryside.