Playing for time: planning and the challenge of managing ‘end-of-life’ minerals extraction in a climate emergency

Planning is an activity conducted in the past and the present that envisions and attempts to manage the future. This article provides a critical analysis of the capacity of a planning system to manage and control land-uses and the impacts of development. The conceptual framing of the article is around time and timing as key themes of recent and ongoing interest in planning. These concepts are examined in the context of a controversial case study of the extraction of coal at an opencast mine located in south Wales in the United Kingdom. The case study relays significant weaknesses in the planning system in acting on the unauthorised extraction of coal even in the context of declarations of climate emergency. The empirical and conceptual dimensions of the paper focus on the importance of time and timing in planning activity, the planning system’s limitations in delivery of what has been imagined in the past, and the significance of third parties in efforts to secure compliance with planning decisions.