NEW DEAL FOR NATIONAL PARK

This constituency has been enlarged to embrace much of Exmoor National Park. In many ways I am fortunate: I now have one of the most scenic constituencies in the country. But the more I have become acquainted with my new territory the more I have become aware how disenchanted people feel with the way the park is being run.

For those of who you don’t live on Exmoor let me explain. The 263 square miles of the national park are divided between the neighbouring authorities of North Devon and West Somerset districts and Devon and Somerset county councils. In addition to these two tiers of bureaucracy those living within the park are subject to a third – that of the park authority itself.

That runs its own planning department with a highly restrictive regime: what might be permissible in planning terms ten yards outside the park boundary is often not ten yards inside it.

But it’s the membership of the park authority itself – and in particular the ministerial appointees – that local people find so irksome. Ask yourself how you would feel if some of the members of your district council had been parachuted in from hundred miles away, yet were still empowered to make far-reaching policy decisions affecting you, your neighbours and friends.

Yet that’s the very situation Exmoor people are in. They do not have the right to vote anyone onto the park authority because its members are either local councillors appointed by their own authorities, or have been appointed by the minister. Hardly a situation where, you might think, grass roots opinions have much chance of being heard. And you would be right.

The fact is that the governance of Exmoor has disappeared in a haze of bureaucracy. We have a planning department which is seen as stifling, rather than encouraging development and still appears to wish to exercise some strange desire to preserve the entire park in aspic.

We have an authority where the need to create and maintain a balanced, vibrant local economy has been sidelined in favour of attempting to run the biggest agricultural museum in the country.

And we have authority members empowered to make far-reaching strategic policy decisions affecting the lives of thousands of people without in any way being accountable to them.

At a time when the drift of young people away from the park is threatening its very future as a working agricultural environment the authority has finally woken up to the need to provide affordable local homes so that the young families who will be the future lifeblood of villages can remain. But the effort is woefully late, the number of built and proposed units pitifully small. And no-one has any means of obtaining redress for this or any other failings.

One thing is very clear – and emerged in a constituents’   survey I conducted last year. Local people’s disenchantment with the national park is rapidly turning into distrust and dislike. The gulf between Exmoor House and Exmoor people is wide and getting wider by the day.

And that’s why I am producing my own Manifesto for the Moor.

Firstly, we must make the park authority more accountable. That means an electable authority board, with the majority – say four-fifths - drawn from within the national park and the remainder from people who may live elsewhere in Somerset or Devon but who have a clear, specialised interest in some aspect of Exmoor life.

The proceedings of the authority must be open to full public scrutiny and its performance must be regularly assessed – and corrective measures called for, if necessary – by the Audit Commission.

And at a time when every local authority in the country needs desperately to save money we should kiss goodbye to the park’s dedicated planning department. We can really do without it. We can manage with planning being run by the two district councils, though while still applying separate yardsticks to applications from within the national park. It is, after all, how the system used to work.

I also want to press for the creation of a strong, independent watchdog to keep a very close eye indeed on the park authority’s activities. The Exmoor Society has done a pretty good job up until now, but we should not forget that it is a voluntary organisation and that despite its best efforts relationships between the authority and local people have reached a very low ebb indeed.

We need a body which will hold the park authority to account, challenge policies that are seen as overly restrictive, and refuse to be fobbed off by officials blaming everything on ‘government policy’ – which is usually not the case at all.

Do all this and we may yet fuse Exmoor people and the park authority into a single unit working together to create sustainable jobs and prosperity for local people. Exmoor may yet emerge as a model national park – rather than a model of how not to run one.

And is this core issue, of bridging the gap between authority and people that must be made the priority. Currently national park officials are working on a 15-year plan. That, quite frankly, is ridiculous, when so much can change in the course of 15 months, or 15 weeks. Even Stalin only planned five years ahead.

Long-term planning is a pointless exercise in organised time-wasting and paper-shuffling, particularly when there are more fundamental issues, such as those I have outlined, to be addressed.

The need is pressing: only by bringing authority and people together and working towards a common goal are we going to save the moor from slumping into steep economic decline with the direst of consequences for locals, their communities – and the wonderful landscapes we all cherish so much.

Reconnect and work with local people and the national park authority can achieve much. Continue to ignore and override them and it is only shortening the odds on its disappearance.

(We are not responsible for the content of external web sites)

• http://www.exmoor-nationalpark.gov.uk/
• http://www.exmoorsociety.com/
• http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmhansrd/cm081216/halltext/81216h0008.htm#0812179000286