National Park bosses warn that funding cuts threaten conservation

These days, the boss of the Northumberland National Park clutches at hope wherever he can find it.

We’re standing by the stump of what is probably Britain’s most famous tree – or at least it was – at Sycamore Gap at Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland National Park. The chief executive of the park, Tony Gates, points down at the new shoots sprouting from the famous sycamore tree, cut down in an act of vandalism.

The point is, he says, the way this wanton act of destruction hit the psyche of the nation so hard, illustrated just how valuable, vital our National Parks are, and these landscapes are, for our general wellbeing.

He coins a phrase you’ll hear from quite a few national park bosses: ‘a natural health service’. But that’s where the good news ends.

Tony Gates tells us that National Parks in Scotland have seen budget increases of 12% , Wales 5%, but it’s an 8.2% cut across the board for England’s ten National Parks.

He says:  “We’re below the level of what I need to keep my doors open and to do the things we have a statutory legal obligation to do.“

He describes the park as being at the edge of a cliff, a precipice. But what does that really mean? After all, these treasured landscapes will go on being the landscapes they are, having the beauty they have, attracting the visitors they do, regardless of whether there is a park authority in place or not.

“Well, of course, that’s true,” he says, “but certain key functions will no longer be happening across our National Parks in the way that they once were, unless we get the funding mechanism improved.”

Things like caring, above all, for the planning of these landscapes. They look the way they do because of strict planning controls on buildings, farming, on preserving the culture, the castles, the way of life in these areas across the UK. The parks also have a vital role to play in ‘30-30’ – the government’s stated aim to set aside 30% of our land for nature by 2030.

There’s also diversity and outreach. It’s long been the case that people felt, to some degree, that our National Parks had become something of a plaything for the white middle class, and the white, able-bodied middle class at that.

“We’re below the level of what I need to keep my doors open and to do the things we have a statutory legal obligation to do.“
Tony Gates

So vibrant educational programmes in Northumberland are working with the urban areas of Tyneside to break down that old-fashioned and prejudiced view.

Those projects go from education in schools, right down to the park rangers, improving signposting, keeping paths safe, so that there is better access to these landscapes.

All of this work now appears threatened by the cuts and Tony Gates has had 20 years at the helm to see what is happening, 20 years in which enormous and entrepreneurial spirit has been shown, not just in this park, but in all of them.

A few miles away from the Sycamore Gap and Hadrian’s Wall lies the Sill Visitor Centre, a carefully designed wood and steel structure, solar panels and turf grass growing on the roof, all designed to blend in carefully with the landscape.

It cost £14 million to construct, but not a penny of that came from taxpayers. So Tony Gates is pretty angry when the government, in the shape of Defra, says that it is working hard with the national parks to cut bureaucracy and improve their entrepreneurial spirit.

He says that’s exactly what they’ve been doing for years. You can’t help but notice that when we arrive to interview Tony Gates, there’s no press officer, or indeed press officers plural, in tow. Just him and a visitor centre which stands as a symbol of gaining revenue streams for these kinds of ventures from the private sector, as well as lottery funding.

So is Northumberland a lone case? Is that the only problem? It’s certainly unusual for a chief executive of a National Park to put their head above the parapet and draw attention to the problem in such stark terms. Perhaps it’s the straight-talking spirit of a man raised in Coalisland in County Tyrone, where they do tend to call a spade a spade.

But Tony’s not alone. Not too far southwest, a very different National Park,  the mountains of the Lake District. Where Northumberland attracts fewer than two million visitors a year, the Lake District has almost the opposite problem – 18 million visit this park, world renowned, of course.

They have regular and profitable income streams. For instance, 30 car parks across the park. So you’d think they would have no problem.

Far from it, their chief executive, Gavin Capstick tells us, at the UK’s first ever National Park visitor centre on Windermere. The lake, the location, one of the ultimate tourist destination honeypots of the UK.

It’s just building up for the Easter rush and yet they’re packing everything into cardboard boxes at the centre. They’re moving out. It is shutting down. Nine jobs have had to go. And yes, the reason is the same – the funding cuts from central government.

Places like this can’t compete with commercial cafes up and down the lakeside. Here, it’s a public body. You have to have a board to govern what goes on here. No paying minimum wage rates or zero hours contracts or seasonal layoffs in this sector.

So the cafe, it seems, simply couldn’t compete on a level playing field with commercial premises down the road. It’s a stark example. And if it’s happening in Windermere, if it’s happening in the Lake District National Park, then no park, it seems, is safe from the effects of the cuts.

The strategy here, the chief executive explains to us, is to draw back and consider what your real core purpose is. Here they’ve decided it’s the work primarily of the park rangers. The park still maintains around 33, in permanent posts responsible for repairing some of the bridges, signposting the footpaths, being the eyes and ears on the ground along with volunteers for the National Park Authority.

But it’s come at a price, not least those nine jobs which went at the Windermere centre. Not every national park in England has a CEO who wishes to speak out, but certainly Gavin Capstick was keen to add his voice to that of Tony Gates in Northumberland.

Something, they feel, has to be done. Both men say that we need to have a radical new national conversation about what our National Parks are for and how they should be funded going forward.

But it seems the government is not for turning on this. Perhaps more ominously, not particularly interested in opening up that new debate, which as Tony Gates says may even encompass questioning whether we need ten National Parks in England. Talk about thinking the unthinkable, saying the unsayable.

That’s a pretty unusual question to raise from somebody passionately committed to them and at a time when we are adding national parks to the list, not reducing them. But it seems the two men between them have now lit the blue touch paper.

Whether the government wants it or whether it does not, this debate is unlikely to fizzle out. The message from the National Park bosses that we spoke to is quite clear. No, of course, they’re not going to disappear. Of course the parks are not going to vanish in some way, but the National Park Authorities, they say, cannot keep going with the job which is required of them by law, and cannot fulfil the sort of duties we’ve outlined above, unless we rethink the way they are financed.

A Defra spokesperson said: “Our National Parks and green spaces are a source of great national pride, which is why this Government is providing a capital uplift of up to £15 million for National Parks.

“This is in addition to the £400 million we are investing in nature across the country, including in our National Parks. We are also helping National Parks cut through bureaucracy and take an entrepreneurial approach to boost earnings.”

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