Firm’s liquidation raises new fears about mine restoration scheme

Martin Shipton

Fresh fears have been raised about the restoration of Wales’ biggest opencast coal mine after another company owned by the businessman who ran the mine was put into compulsory liquidation by Britain’s tax authority.

HMRC secured a High Court winding-up order against Jackson Properties Ltd, whose sole director is David Lewis. The firm owed an undisclosed amount in unpaid tax.

Its most recently filed accounts, for the 12 months to July 2024, showed it had debts totalling £344,987. But with land and buildings valued at £293,530 and debts owed to it of £81,113, the company was said to have net assets of £29,656. However, the granting of the winding-up order suggests the accounts painted an over-optimistic picture of the firm’s prospects.

Mr Lewis is also the sole director of Merthyr (South Wales) Ltd, which operated the Ffos-y-fran mine near Merthyr Tydfil and is legally responsible for restoring the land occupied by the mine.

In 2024, the Senedd’s Climate Change, Environment and Infrastructure Committee published a report that described the “epic mismanagement” of the Ffos-y-fran mine at Merthyr Tydfil, saying nothing similar must be allowed to happen in any community in Wales.

The licence to extract coal from Ffos-y-fran expired in September 2022, but local residents reported that the mine continued operating illegally for many months afterwards, before the site closed in November 2023.

In 2025, Nation.Cymru revealed how Mr Lewis had a conviction for defrauding a bank of £88,000 to fund his gambling addiction and how he had assaulted an elderly solicitor outside his Newport office.

According to the latest accounts of Merthyr (South Wales) Ltd, around £86.4m has been earmarked for the restoration of the mine. However, the firm submitted a restoration plan to Merthyr Tydfil council that was far more modest than had been expected.

The diminished plan would leave three coal tips in place, with the company warning that it had “insufficient funds” to deliver the far more extensive plan previously agreed to restore the landscape.

Under the scaled-down proposals, it would seek to reduce the height of one coal tip and leave two others in place.

In April 2026, the Welsh Government “called in” the scaled-down restoration scheme, meaning it, rather than Merthyr Tydfil council, will decide whether to grant planning permission.

At the time, Chris and Alyson Austin, who live near the mine and have long campaigned against its continued operation, welcomed the Welsh Government’s decision.

“We are really, really pleased,” said Mrs Austin.

“We’ve always felt the local authority lacked the capacity or resources to deal with a complex and controversial plan of this nature.”

Remediation

We emailed Mr Lewis, stating that we were putting together a story based on the compulsory liquidation of Jackson Properties Ltd on the application of HMRC, pointing out that this had increased concerns about his willingness and ability to pay for the remediation of Ffos-y-fran.

We noted that, on the day before the winding-up order was granted, a charge on Jackson Properties’ assets was imposed by Gwent Holdings Ltd. That company owns Ffos-y-fran, and its sole director is Mr Lewis’s wife, Jane. We asked why the charge had been imposed and how much Jackson Properties owed to HMRC.

We also noted that, in the most recent accounts for Merthyr (South Wales) Ltd, the company that operated the mine, the amount set aside for restoration now stands at £86.4m. A note on page 25 of the accounts states: “The £10.6m utilised during the year includes significant cost of plant hire including the cost of under-utilised plant which was hired but not fully engaged”.

Detail

We asked Mr Lewis to explain this in greater detail and to outline what restoration work had been undertaken for the £10.6m spent.

We also asked where the approximately £86.4m was located: was it securely held in a bank account or merely a notional amount for accounting purposes?

We asked him how confident he was that the proposed slimmed-down restoration scheme for Ffos-y-fran would be approved.

Mr Lewis did not respond.

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