Following Stakeholder Engagements held by the Coal Authority (since renamed as the Mining Remediation Authority) in October 2023 and March 2024, the Authority has updated its Permit Terms and Conditions in order to address concerns relating to the required unlimited indemnity. Recognising changes within the market relating to their previous position of requesting unlimited indemnities, the Authority has now updated their Permit Terms and Conditions to introduce the following:

Definitions for Designer and Contractor have been included to match the definitions as provided within the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015. Definitions of Client and Agent are also included. These allow the Client to appoint an Agent who may then represent the Client in discussions with the Authority and also enter into binding agreements on behalf of the Client.

The following significant amendments have been made:
• Clause 1 has been amended to cap indemnity at £10 million. The wording has also been revised to limit the extent of the indemnity to ensure that any claims made are ‘reasonable’ thereby excluding costs for damages that are not related to Permit Holder’s actions or that of its contractors and Agents.
• Clause 6 has been amended to clarify that insurance must be ‘sufficient’.
• Clause 12 amended to require permit certificates to be kept on site to try to ensure permit compliance.

Other minor amendments have been made to conditions 3,4,5,7 and 13 to align the conditions to definitions in Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 and in line with the amendments outlined above.

The updated guidance explains the changes they have made in more detail. In summary, indemnity is now capped at £10million and the Authority do not require insurance to be £10million for small-scale operations. Insurance is required only to be adequate to provide the Permit holder with sufficient funds to furnish any likely claim on the indemnity by the Authority.

The updated permit terms and conditions are now published at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coal-mining-permit-terms-and-conditions-application-form/permit-terms-and-conditions

The updated guidance is now published at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/permit-process/permit-process

Article by Peter Plumpton, Ground Investigation Estimator at SOCOTEC.