HONISTER Slate Mine has been granted permission for a 1,035 metre long zip wire in the Lake District – subject to conditions being agreed.

The Lake District National Park Authority’s development control committee sitting in Kendal voted 7-3 in favour of the scheme.

Planning officers at Murley Moss had recommended refusal. They said the zip wire infrastructure would have little effect on the landscape but people using it would.

However, some committee members argued that the Honister area was heavily industrialised and not a place where visitors sought out peace and tranquillity.

The mine, on a remote mountain pass between Borrowdale and Buttermere, has twice been refused permission in 2011 and 2012.

The latest project will involve a wire from high up on Honister Crag running to an “intermediate” landing point further down the mountainside.

From there, a shorter run would take users down to the mine car park and would be used by organisations working with disabled people.

Crucially, the project will also be utilised to transport quarried walling slate from an inaccessible area on the mountainside down to the workshops - in a method harking back to the operation’s original mining infrastructure of the 1920s.