1. These regulations shall come into operation on 19th September 1966 and may be cited as the Coal and Other Mines (Ventilation) (Variation) Regulations 1966.

2. The Coal and Other Mines (Ventilation) Regulations 1956(1) (in these regulations referred to as "the principal regulations") as varied by the Coal and Other Mines (Ventilation) (Variation) Regulations 1960(2) shall have effect subject to the further variations specified in these regulations.

3. After regulation 3(1) of the principal regulations there shall be added the words "and of regulation 7A".

4. For paragraph (2) of regulation 5 of the principal regulations there shall be substituted the following paragraph:-

"(2) An inspector may serve on the manager of the mine a notice requiring determinations to be made also at one or more additional points at any such longwall face or in any airway serving such a longwall face being points specified in the notice."

5. After regulation 7 of the principal regulations there shall be added the following regulation:-

"7A. On every occasion on which a determination of firedamp content is required to be made at or as near as is practicable to the point in an airway serving a longwall face thirty feet from the nearest working place at that face, being an airway which as regards that face is a return airway, a determination of firedamp content shall also be made as near as is practicable to the point in that airway thirty feet from the junction thereof with any other return airway."

6. In regulation 8(2) of the principal regulations after the words "if any determination" there shall be inserted the words "other than one made pursuant to regulation 7A".

EXPLANATORY NOTE

Regulation 5 of the Coal and Other Mines (Ventilation) Regulations 1956 prescribes places at which determinations of firedamp content are required to be made at longwall faces by virtue of the use of electric power at or within one hundred and fifty feet of that face, or by virtue of the firing of shots. Regulation 7 prescribes the intervals at which such determinations are to be made.

These regulations add to those provisions by requiring determinations to be made at the junction of the return airway serving such a longwall face with any other return airway, upon the same occasions as those upon which determinations are by regulation 5 required to be made, at or as near as is practicable to the point in that airway thirty feet from the nearest working place at the face which it serves.