Regional Administrative Records

Division within COAL

1884-1994

Regional administrative records relating to the responsibilities of divisions, areas and collieries.

Divisional records:

• Minutes, COAL 6, COAL 75
• East Midlands, COAL 50
• North-Eastern, COAL 48
• North-Western, COAL 49
• Northern, COAL 47
• South-Eastern, COAL 53
• South-Western, COAL 52
• West Midlands, COAL 51

Area records:

• Minutes, COAL 76
• Barnsley, COAL 57
• Central, COAL 67
• Doncaster, COAL 58
• North Derbyshire, COAL 60
• North Nottinghamshire, COAL 61
• North Western, COAL 68
• North Yorkshire, COAL 56
• North East, COAL 55
• South Midlands, COAL 63
• South Nottinghamshire, COAL 62
• South Wales, COAL 65
• South Yorkshire, COAL 59
• Western, COAL 64

Colliery records:

• Minutes, COAL 77
• Colliery profiles, COAL 84

Charts and tables relating to divisional organisation are in COAL 5

Records of the Scottish Division and of the Scottish area are in the National Archives of Scotland.

Public Record(s)

English

27 series

Topics

Coal

Mining and quarrying

From its inception, the National Coal Board delegated responsibility to eight divisional boards, which had been set up by the end of 1946. Each was appointed by and collectively responsible to the national board. The divisions were based geographically on the main groups of coalfields: Scottish, Northern, North-Eastern, North-Western, East Midlands, West Midlands, South-Western, South-Eastern.

Under the divisions the coalfields were grouped into areas, each in the charge of an area general manager. There were 48 areas until their number was reduced to 38 between 1960 and 1966. From 1955 there was also an intermediate level of management between the area and the colliery, known as the group. Each was under a group manager and consisted of not less than two collieries. There were at first about 200 groups, the number being gradually reduced to 150 by the mid 1960s.

In 1967 a new three-tier structure of regional and local organisation replaced the previous five layers, the collieries being directly subject to area organisation, in its turn directly responsible to the board. There were seventeen areas and each Area was directly responsible to Board Headquarters through the Area Director who was responsible for the day to day running. Decisions about policy affecting collieries were made at Area level by the Area Director and confirmation/agreement was then sought from the Board.

In 1975 there were about 250 collieries, managed by colliery general managers, agent managers, or colliery managers, according to their size and complexity, directly accountable to one of the area directors. Each of these was assisted by a deputy director (mining), a deputy director (administration) and a production manager.

Most Areas consisted of 300-400 staff providing specialist services such as industrial relations, medical and X-ray, ambulance service and wages administration including the actual paying out of wages at collieries. Units were normally classified as collieries but this term also included other functions such as stores, workshops, open cast mines and even non-mining activities such as brick works, coke ovens and briquette plants.