Dorset Life Opinion – Why we need a Dorset National Park and need it soon
Dorset Life editor Joël Lacey makes an impassioned plea to Natural England to protect the future of our county
Published in June ’18
Eighty years ago this year, the CPRE (then the Council for the Preservation of Rural England, now the Campaign to Protect Rural England) produced a film suggesting the establishment of a number of National Parks in England and Wales. One of those National Parks suggested was that of the Dorset Coast. In the intervening eight decades, all the areas – bar that of the Dorset Coast shown in the 1938 film – have been made National Parks. Dorset was again suggested for National Park status in the 1945 Dower Report commissioned by the government.
Now the proposal of a Dorset National Park is once more a live issue. The area proposed for being granted National Park status is not the whole of Dorset. It ignores Bournemouth, Poole (except its harbour), Christchurch and the eastern conurbation and indeed anything east of Blandford, and also Weymouth, large tracts of land from Dorchester to Blandford above Hardy’s Egdon Heath and much of north and north-west Dorset. But although the map may have been drawn, it has not been inked in yet. It is time that Dorset joined the twelve existing national parks. The aim is not a ‘Back to the 1950s with the Famous Five’ theme park, but the protection of the globally important coast and its hinterland from being turned into some kind of 1970s Torremolinos or, even worse, a 2020 Monte Carlo where only millionaires can afford to live.
In order for tourists and locals alike to enjoy the amenity of beauty spots like Chesil Beach, they first need to be preserved against overexploitation
For decades there has been a very strong case for the majority of Dorset to be included in legislation that would enshrine the area’s protection in law, but now that factual case has been bolstered by a pressing need for protecting the county from a number of threats. A National Park’s unique checks and balances system means that the needs of the special environment and those of the existing population will generally triumph over the offering of utility to visitors
and tourists.
Why now? The answer lies in the results of two things: the persistent and diligent gutting of local government funding over the last twelve years, and also in the very recent (and ongoing) wholly undemocratic decision to dismantle the county and district council structure in Dorset. The last time two tiers of government disappeared at a stroke of a pen in Westminster was in 1649, when the Privy Council and the House of Lords were abolished and a republic established instead.
The plan to create two Dorset super-councils to replace the nine existing councils to ‘save untold millions’ is fraught with the dangers of over-optimism. All the costs are up-front and all the savings are not only way down the road ‘once things have bedded in’, but may also be wholly illusory or simply not come to pass. Mainly, though, moving planning away from the district level also removes the best elements of NIMBYism, which attempt to prevent the county being tarmacked over to build endless unaffordable executive and holiday homes for people who don’t live here.
The recent change in planning law to have a ‘presumption of acceptance’ raises the spectre of development on an apocalyptic scale if local politicians no longer have the ability to put their local area first and to block, successfully and without bankrupting the council in legal fees, schemes that are out of scale. The fact that local government cannot afford to, or no longer has the right, to build houses to replace the stock lost after the ‘right-to-buy’ is enforced increases pressure to accept some ludicrously large schemes, just so that some small portion of the scheme will be affordable by local people. National Parks are not against development and their plans reflect what local communities need (building on Neighbourhood Plans) to promote developments that are appropriate and sustainable.
Much of Dorset is already designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), but unlike National Parks, AONBs have no statutory planning powers and rely on the decisions of a multitude of local councils who are all trying to meet their housing targets. A Dorset National Park would not only have a statutory role in planning and housing, but also judge how to balance that with tourism and environmental impact.
Significant manmade objects like the Cobb at Lyme Regis are just as worthy of protection against overexploitation as the fossil coast which it protects
The Sandford Principle by which competing National Park needs are assessed, was named after the National Parks Policy Review Committee chair, Lord Sandford. His committee’s 1974 recommendation states that: ‘Where irreconcilable conflicts exist between conservation and public enjoyment, then conservation interest should take priority.’
This was amended in the 1995 Environment Act to say: ‘If it appears that there is a conflict between those purposes, [the National Park Authority] shall attach greater weight to the purpose of conserving and enhancing the natural beauty, wildlife and cultural heritage of the area,’ which figuratively translates as: ‘protecting the area’s quintessential qualities is more important than bigger car parks and smoother roads for tourists’ or ‘having somewhere affordable for those working in the tourism industry to live is more important than swankier hotels or millionaire’s penthouses’.
On a financial level, the benefits in terms of additional funding streams available to National Parks that are not individually or collectively available to the alphabet soup of protected areas (AONBs, SSSIs, SNCIs, Ramsar wetland sites, SACs, MCZs or SPAs) in Dorset represent an opportunity too good to be missed.
Outside of county farms, which may or may not survive first contact with the new Rural Dorset Super-Council, the future of local government’s influence on agriculture in a post-Brexit world is likely to be minimal. Rural transport is about as sporadic and thinly spread as it has ever been and increasingly relies on volunteers and grant-funded bus schemes that may or may not last. Elsewhere in the UK, the South Downs area has secured over £100 million in additional funds since it became a National Park in 2011 and around £9 million of that has been for sustainable transport.
There is the additional benefit that becoming a National Park adds immense value to an area’s appeal to tourists. That is good news economically as Dorset already earns around £1.5 billion per year from tourism.
In short, although the specifics of the area to be incorporated into the National Park still need working on, almost irrespective of the detail, a Dorset National Park would be good for Dorset.
For more information on the factual background of Dorset as a national park, visit www.dorsetnationalpark.com
