EARLY closure of the Selby coalfield would leave a £130-million-a-year "black hole" in the local economy, a devastating report claims today.

It warns of a potential economic meltdown and the loss of up to 5,000 jobs across Yorkshire if owner UK Coal shuts down the Selby complex next year.

The grim forecast is contained in a study report by experts at Leeds Metropolitan University.

They say that to spare Selby the devastation suffered during the wholesale closure of pits in the 1980s and 1990s, the complex's closure must be put back to Autumn 2005.

The report said this would give the town more time to attract new businesses and jobs and organise retraining programmes for redundant miners.

UK Coal will decide within the next two weeks the fate of the three-pit complex, which has lost £92 million in the last three years.

The report warns that unless more time can be bought by extending the coalfield's lifespan, the knock-on effect across the region would be disastrous.

It says that up to 3,000 people working for companies supplying the complex with goods and equipment could be thrown out of work, as well as the 2,000 men who work underground.

Selby district itself would lose up to 910 jobs (including 510 miners who live locally), and up to £130 million would be lost to the local economy in the first 12 months following closure. This effect would get worse over the next five years.

The experts fear that more than £400 million could be lost to the region's economy overall with the blight of redundancies and failing businesses felt as far afield as Harrogate and the East Riding.

"The impact of closure will be felt throughout the rest of the decade," says the report, marked "private and confidential".

It also recommends the setting up of a special Selby Task Force and a phased closure programme.

The report was deliberately leaked by Selby MP John Grogan on the day of a full-scale Commons debate on future energy policy.

Mr Grogan hopes it will pile more pressure on the Government to sanction a £100 million closure aid package, enabling the complex to stay open until Autumn 2005.

Mr Grogan said today: "The challenge for the Government is to ensure that the largest remaining coal complex in the country is closed in a more humane and a more planned way than happened when so many mines closed in the 1980s and 1990s.

"If that requires additional coal aid, I think that would be a price worth paying, particularly as for decades in France and Germany, the policy has been to gently run down large coal mines over a number of years."

Updated: 11:34 Thursday, June 20, 2002