Woodhouse Investment Pte Ltd and West Cumbria Mining (Holdings) Ltd. v. United Kingdom (ICSID Arbitration)

This case constitutes the first arbitration brought against the United Kingdom under the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) Convention. The claim was filed by Woodhouse Investment Pte Ltd, a Singaporean company, and West Cumbria Mining (Holdings) Ltd, in relation to the proposed Woodhouse Colliery, a deep coking-coal mine near Whitehaven in Cumbria. The arbitration (Case No. ARB/25/37) was registered on August 8, 2025 by the claimants against the United Kingdom under the 1975 UK-Singapore Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT). Planning permission for the mine was initially granted in 2022 after a lengthy process, but on September 13, 2024, the High Court quashed that approval, finding legal deficiencies in the decision—particularly in the treatment of climate impacts—following challenges advanced by Friends of the Earth and SLACC. After the High Court judgment, the regulatory context shifted on two fronts. First, on September 26, 2024, the Coal Authority refused West Cumbria Mining Ltd’s three conditional underground coal-mining license applications for the Woodhouse Colliery (references CA11/UND/0193/N, /0194/N and /0195/N), setting out the basis for refusal in a determination package. Second, on November 14, 2024, the Government announced its intention—confirmed in a Written Ministerial Statement and associated communications—to legislate a prohibition on granting new coal extraction licenses, implementing a manifesto commitment to restrict new coal mining in the UK. During the post-quash redetermination process in early 2025, West Cumbria Mining Ltd itself withdrew its planning application, and the Government confirmed it would have no further role in the redetermination as a result.  The claimants—Woodhouse Investment Pte Ltd (Singapore) and West Cumbria Mining (Holdings) Ltd—allege that the United Kingdom’s actions and policy measures unlawfully interfered with their investment and breached treaty protections under the 1975 UK–Singapore BIT, including (as reported) fair and equitable treatment and protection against unlawful expropriation. Public reporting identifies the ICSID filing as the mechanism through which compensation is sought, and ICSID’s register lists the matter as a pending case regarding a coal-mining project.  In terms of climate context, the controversy centered on the project’s compatibility with the UK’s legally binding net-zero framework and international climate commitments, with the High Court’s quashing decision underscoring the need to account for the project’s climate impacts. Subsequent licensing refusals and the policy move to end new coal licenses illustrate how domestic climate-mitigation policies can intersect with foreign-investment protections, a tension increasingly visible in investor-state disputes involving fossil-fuel projects.