Central Heating by coal or gas - any idea of costs?

I assume you mean natural (mains) gas? It's a close run thing between coal and LPG, but natural gas is substantially cheaper. I don't have current figures to hand, but back in the days when we had a house with coal fired C/H I was spending up to £1500 a year on coal. When we had oil fired C/H our oil bill was £250 a year and the house was a lot warmer. We've moved house since then so I can't give a comparison at current prices, and it's decades since we had mains gas. However oil and natural gas have been similar in price for a long time.

Anyway coal fired central heating really is a waste of space. It's just a major PITA, and unlike gas or oil it's near-impossible to have it working well automatically. The boilers need more servicing, have a shorter service life and are generally crap.

go 4 gas i had coal for years, comparing the 2 now, gas wins, also it is much cleaner, smudger