02 July 2015
Fading Icons: Digging the National Parks
by J R Thomas
Big ideas often take a remarkably long time to come to fruition in British politics. In the USA of the 1860’s, even before the West was finally won, the American federal government began to take public ownership of great swathes of the western American wilderness and designate them as National Parks, areas where nature would remain raw and development was forbidden. The idea appealed to many early conservationists in the UK as the oozing growth of the cities began to erode the rural wildness, especially in Northern England. The first practical manifestation of this was the foundation of the National Trust in the late nineteenth century, driven by an urge to save the English Lake District from housing development.
The pressure to create more powerful legislative restraints on development rumbled on, with a failed attempt to introduce legislation to create national parks in 1931. Finally, in that glorious glow of victory after the Second World War, Attlee’s Labour government appointed Sir Arthur Hobhouse to prepare legislation to establish a network of national parks. Hobhouse and his committee recommended ten extensive areas for national park status, based on their great natural beauty and also on their ability to become centres of “open-air recreation” (Sir Arthur no doubt had in mind hobnailed boots and khaki shorts and probably egg and cress sandwiches and lemon pop). The genius of the legislation was that it did not take ownership of the land under government control – it left it exactly where it was, with private landowners and farmers, and with some public authorities such as Manchester Corporation, which owned large parts of the eastern Lake District for water gathering. Indeed, even the planning authority did not change in all but two of the ten designated parks – the control was left with the relevant County Councils. Only the Lake District and the Peak District were given their own planning boards, because of their scale and because they crossed several planning authority boundaries.
So well-regarded was both the principle and the detail of the legislation that it was passed with all-party support in 1949 and the result is generally judged to have been a major success, unlike many matters on which everyone agrees. The lack of interference with land ownership made the system much less controversial than it would otherwise have been, and, although the planning restraints were restrictive, they were not so tight that local businesses and the local inhabitants could not adapt and modernise their buildings, and indeed even put up new premises if sensitively sited and thoughtfully designed. Since the original ten parks were established, another two have been added (New Forest and South Downs) and parts of the Norfolk Broads have also been brought under similar rules though not designated as a National Park.
The most controversial change has been that all of the parks have had their own planning authorities since 1977. These authorities are quangos – they are chosen, unelected, from local interested and competent parties and are not subject to the democratic process. This was to overcome the urges that local councils have had from time to time to put other interests ahead of the protection of the parkscape – especially when employment or the local economy came into conflict with preservation. The Park Planning Authorities have succeeded in overriding these interests but there is a growing muttering amongst those who live in and near to the parks that the planners are too remote from modern needs and impede necessary progress.
The planners probably have an impossible job and their remoteness from the democratic process does perhaps weaken their moral authority. As we race from the twentieth century into the twenty-first century, it is at least arguable that the parks are being pickled rather than preserved.
One of the first great planning battles was on the northern edge of Dartmoor. The Ministry of Transport, overwhelmingly supported by Devon County Council and the good people of the town of Okehampton, wanted to build a bypass to the south of the town in order to remove the A30 (the main holiday traffic route west) from its path through the town. Although there were possible alternative routes, they were as damaging to the landscape and much more expensive than the preferred route to the south – which, alas, ran through the edge of the Dartmoor National Park. It was a battle fought at great expense over many years, with the national park authority ultimately losing. The road was sensitively built and well landscaped, but it is a broad swath of tarmac and noise and fumes. It is still difficult to say what the right solution was.
Other infringements have been more surreptitious. Forestry planting has been one big challenge, the march of the conifers in the Snowdonia and the Northumberland parks making enormous changes to the texture and colour of the landscape. The collapse of the small upland farms has been another, as has the need for large and cheap farming sheds in the Lake District and the North York Moors parks. Quarrying and roads (again) have created great controversy in the Derbyshire Dales. And everywhere residents and weekenders alike want to extend their homes, but not to allow their neighbours the same latitude…
Now another great battle is in train. The battleground is the North York Moors Park, an upland to the west of Whitby, mostly heather moor, stretching 40 miles to the edge of the Hambledon Hills. It is an area of undoubted beauty. It is also surrounded by areas of very high unemployment – Middlesbrough, Hartlepool and Darlington (all decaying industrial towns), and Scarborough and Whitby (former fishing ports and declining holiday resorts) – now struggling to find an economic role.
Economically, salvation seems to have arrived. Stretching out under the North Sea for many miles is an enormous vein of potash, probably the largest reserve in the world. It has been known about for a long time. There is indeed a second vein close to it which has been mined for many years from Bowlby, a sea-cliff top site between Redcar and Whitby. Potash is a vital element of modern agricultural fertilisers and there is little elsewhere in the world, what there is being in inaccessible areas. This new vein can be easily reached by a conventional mine from low value farmland. Except… Except the only access is in the North York Moors National Park. The mining company, Sirius Minerals, recognised it had a fight on its hands from the very start. Their approach has been meticulous and carefully considered. Unlike the very visible buildings of Bowlby, the Sirius buildings will be mostly sunk underground, and the buildings that will be visible will be disguised as farm buildings (large modern farm buildings, it should be said, not pantiles and stone). The whole site will be planted with native trees, so that within 25 years everything will be concealed within a wood. No industrial activities will take place at the minehead. The ore will be conveyed on a long series of conveyer belts through a deep tunnel to Middlesbrough where the crushing and handling will provide much-needed work. It will create a thousand jobs directly and many more from the subsidiary processes. There has been an enormous procedure of consultation and informing. In fact the whole thing is an exemplary specimen of how to conduct a twenty-first century planning application. It is hard to see how development, if it must take place, could be any more sensitive than what is proposed.
It has worked. The proposal enjoys enormous support in the local community, socially, politically and economically. Everybody seems to want it to happen. The only opposition appears to be from the greener end of the conservationist lobby who do not want any development at all, or more widely fear that if this development were permitted it would be the thin edge of that wedge which always appears with controversial firsts. There is one other unhappy group, however, and no reader will be surprised to hear that this is the national park planners.
They have a clear mandate – to not allow development in the national park. They are no doubt also well aware of the popular mood which in this instance is very clearly for the development. But of course it is not the official’s decision; that ultimate responsibility rests with the national park planning committee, which met last Tuesday night. The planning officers did the only thing they probably could do: they wrote a detailed report and analysis – and made no recommendation. The planning committee voted for the development – by eight votes to seven. Though there are likely to be attempts at a challenge, it seems very likely to go ahead unless some strong legal ground can be found. The political consequences of the government trying to reverse the committee decision would not bear thinking about. As one local journalist at last night’s meeting said “I am used to seeing a public gallery full of protesters, but never before packed with supporters”.
Will it set a precedent? The national parks are under pressure from all sorts of possible development – more facilities for tourists, more housing for locals and for those who might bring money into what are mostly poor rural areas. The wind turbine threat may be receding, but the advance of hydro power technology will make possible the installation of turbines in mountain streams, and the improvement of solar cells will potentially give us a power station on every roof; but in a national park will that be countenanced? New roads, or the alleviation of dangerous elements of old ones, may improve road safety in the hills, but at what visual cost?
There are cost-benefit calculations which can be done, and the potash mine shows that developments can be effectively camouflaged if they are profitable enough. The question is probably to what extent the current planning system can accommodate that debate. National park planning committees have a clear mandate to oppose development, not to make a finely balanced judgment as to long and short term benefits. The debate is not going to go away, but the result in the North York Moors shows that the government can let the existing system creak on for a while.
