Coal Act 1938

3 Commission to acquire fee simple in coal

(1) The Commission shall acquire in accordance with the provisions of this Part of this Act the fee simple in all coal and mines of coal, together with such property and rights annexed thereto and such rights to withdraw support as are hereinafter mentioned, subject to such servitudes, restrictive covenants and other matters adversely affecting any of the said coal or mines as are hereinafter mentioned, and subject to the provisions of this Part of this Act with respect to the retention of interests arising under coal-mining leases and of certain other interests.

(2) During the period between the first day of January nineteen hundred and thirty-nine (in this Act referred to as the " valuation date ") and the first day of July nineteen hundred and forty-two (in this Act referred to as the " vesting date ") all coal and mines of coal shall be held as if all the existing owners thereof had, in respect of all their interests therein other than retained interests and with full capacity so to do, entered into a contract on the valuation date for the sale thereof to the Commission, at a price to be ascertained by valuation, with provision for completion of the contract on the vesting date.

(3) On the vesting date all coal and mines of coal as existing at that date shall vest in the Commission for a title comprising all interests then subsisting in any such coal or mine other than retained interests.

(4) In this Part of this Act the expression " coal "—

(a) means bituminous coal, cannel coal and anthracite; but

(b) shall, in a case in which minerals or substances other than bituminous coal, cannel coal or anthracite are comprised in a lease subsisting at the valuation date which confers a right to work and carry away both that coal or anthracite and those other minerals or substances, include those other minerals or substances, so however that the Commission may, by direction given in the prescribed manner before the expiration of six months from the valuation date, exclude any such other minerals or substances from the operation of this paragraph, and, in the case of any such other minerals or substances which in the opinion of the Commission are or would normally be worked by surface workings and not in association with that coal or anthracite, the Commission shall, if any person interested therein makes application to the Commission in that behalf before the expiration of six months from the valuation date, by direction exclude them from the operation of this paragraph; and

(c) except in the case of references to the making merchantable or disposing of coal, means coal that is unworked, that is to say, not so severed as to have become a chattel.