National parks say hands off amid fresh cuts peril

A raft of measures introduced by the region’s national park authorities has seen key services dramatically scaled back and dozens of job losses, prompting concerns the world-famous landscapes of the Yorkshire Dales, the Peak District and the North York Moors are being placed at grave risk.

Ministers are facing up to the grim reality that the faltering economy means the austerity drive must continue to 2018 following Chancellor George Osborne’s bleak Autumn Statement last week.

He was forced to admit that it is forecast he will miss his target for debt to start falling as a proportion of GDP from 2015/16 – the year of the next General Election.

The North York Moors National Park Authority’s chief executive, Andy Wilson, told the Yorkshire Post any further cuts would severely hamper the work to conserve the fragile landscapes and protect rural communities.

The authority’s grant is being slashed by 21.5 per cent from £5.1m in the last financial year to £4.3m by 2014/15. This amounts to a real term reduction of 35 per cent once inflation and the loss of funding from external organisations are taken into account.

While Mr Wilson stressed he hoped the Government would honour a £4.5m grant for the new financial year first proposed in 2010, he admitted confirmation had still to be received. He also conceded more cuts are a possibility in the medium- to long term.

He said: “The whole of the public sector is being squeezed, but national parks are facing up to cash cuts on what we spend of about 30 per cent. There are very few areas of the public sector which are experiencing this level of cutbacks.

“Having taken a huge hit and not complained, I would hope the Government ensures the legacy of national parks can be maintained for future generations, but there are no guarantees.”

The financial plight of national park authorities has been compounded as they are hugely reliant on annual grants from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), which account for about 75 per cent of budgets. Unlike other local authorities, national parks are unable to count on precepts from local council tax bills to help counter Government cutbacks.

The remaining 25 per cent of national park budgets are funded through planning fees, one-off grants and tourism. But the wettest summer for a century has gravely affected visitor numbers this year, and those who do make the journey are often being more frugal with their spending.

The Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority had hoped to raise £386,000 in car parking fees from April to September, but the actual figure was just £338,000 – a shortfall of more than 12 per cent. The national park’s five shops had aimed to generate £180,000 in the same period – but the actual figure is down by about five per cent.

The authority has already embarked on its biggest ever overhaul as the 2010/11 Government grant of £5.4m will be slashed to £4.2m by 2014/15. More than 30 jobs have been axed and every one of its 36 programmes has been affected, with a dozen abandoned.

Director of corporate services Richard Burnett said: “We have coped as best we can. But if the Government brings more savings we will have to look at cutting key services back and more job losses.”

A Defra spokeswoman said annual budget allocations for national parks would be announced by the end of the year.

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