A PROTEST camp has been set up to to help a community who have lost the fight against another open-cast pit.

The Mainshill Solidarity Group says it will stay at the 340-acre beauty spot near the village of Douglas, Lanarkshire, for as long as it takes for the project to be called off, either by the landowner, operator Scottish Coal or the Scottish Government.

The project was approved by South Lanarkshire Council planners in February and by Scottish ministers in April - despite 650 letters of protest listing health issues, the amount of open-casting already going on close by, the site's proximity to homes and the loss of the mostly wooded area, which is a wildlife haven.

Scottish Coal says it will create 100 jobs and involve surface mining some 1.7m tonnes of coal and 160,000 tonnes of fireclay over a five-year period.

Environmental protestors say the plans contravene the Scottish Government planning policy document SPP16.