‘Bolt from the blue’ as mail depot in Dales set to close after 70 years
Agriculture has been at the core of Yorkshire Dales communities for centuries but farming is now at a critical juncture. Ben Barnett reports.
ANOTHER DALES institution was under threat last night as Royal Mail confirmed plans to permanently close a depot in the heart of the National Park.
The sorting office at Hawes has been staffed by local workers for the past 70 years, and villagers said they were “dismayed” by what they claimed was a lack of consultation over its future.
The village post office will remain open, but some customers will face a 17-mile half-hour drive to Leyburn to collect parcels.
John Blackie, a county and district councillor and executive chairman of the Upper Dales Community Partnership, which runs the post office, said: “There is bound to be a deterioration in customer service.”
He said the news had been “a bolt from the blue”, and further threatened an area already reeling from cuts to public services.
Coun Blackie said: “It’s an abysmal way to be treated by a private organisation that delivers a highly visible public service. The loss of jobs once the current incumbents move on is a real blow to a deeply rural community.”
Royal Mail confirmed that it had proposed “relocating” its delivery operation in Hawes to Leyburn, and that it would separately close its depot at Holbeck in Leeds and move it to an existing city-centre site. The organisation claimed there would be “no impact” on services to customers.
FARMING LEADERS have warned that an urgent review is needed in the Yorkshire Dales National Park to ensure that its vital agricultural industry does not face financial ruin and “destroy” rural communities.
Upland farms are integral to the viability of the National Park’s communities but low market returns, limited access to payments linked to environmental work and acute Brexit uncertainty over the industry’s future financial support threaten to compound the deepening social and economic crisis in the Yorkshire Dales, senior figures said.
The Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority is set to publish a new five-year park management plan this month, and it reports that the core agricultural businesses of many upland sheep farmers are being run at a loss. Even with support payments, more than one in five Dales farms fail to cover their production costs.
The Government has guaranteed the value of current EU support payments, worth £3bn, will be protected until 2022 but from then on the amount of money paid directly to farmers will be capped and more will be linked to on-farm environmental enhancements and the delivery of “public goods”. It is not clear whether funds available to upland farmers will change but beyond this uncertainty, other factors threaten to put upland farmers out of business, said Dales farmer Chris Clark, the founding chairman of the Yorkshire Dales Farmer Network.
Those threats, he said, include tighter bank controls on lending, farmers with children who receive family tax credit getting less as universal tax credit makes self-employed people less eligible for state support, a forecast of falling land and lamb prices if the UK leaves the single market and a domestic slump in beef and lamb consumption.
Mr Clark, who was giving his own personal view rather than that of the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority, of which he is a member, said farmers in the Dales must get a grip of their costs and adopt proper budgeting and marketing plans.
“If farmers, particularly those in the hills, are going to cope, I think they should be planning for the worst and hoping for the best,” said Mr Clark, of Nethergill Farm, Langstrothdale. “They should be planning for what we should do if levels of support go down. If 20 per cent and more in the hills aren’t generating enough money to make a living, any reduction in support is going to be really problematic.
“It is so critical that farm businesses survive. Any reduction impacts on schools, businesses and communities.”
Laurie Norris, county advisor at the National Farmers’ Union, also voiced concerns for upland farmers, saying: “All livestock farmers feel vulnerable right now but the most vulnerable are sheep farmers because they export so much and they are the heart of the uplands. They are absolutely reliant on support payments. If they go it will destroy rural communities. The Dales is a real honeypot for tourism and its landscape is created by farmers.”
One in 10 residents in the Dales works in farming and 41 per cent per cent of land in the park is farmed. Farms are seen as key to the distinctive character of the Dales and are enclosed by more 5,000 miles of dry stone walls, have about 620 miles of hedgerows and contain 4,250 field barns.
FARMERS REMAIN grateful that this county was one of the first to be visited by Michael Gove after he was appointed Environment Secretary last summer – those who met him at the Great Yorkshire Show talk fondly about a politician who was willing to listen to their observations.
Yet, while so much of Mr Gove’s time is now consumed by Brexit, it will be helpful if the Cabinet Minister can clear some time in his diary to enable him to enjoy a longer period in the Yorkshire Dales and become immersed with the day-to-day challenges facing hill farmers.
Some of the country’s most hard-working people, more than one in five Dales farmers are failing to cover their production costs, hence the importance now being attached to the reform of farm subsidies that will take place when Britain no longer comes under the auspices of the Common Agricultural Policy.
Not only is the future financial viability of such farms crucial to food production, but farmers play a crucial role in managing the natural environment and ensuring that Britain’s countryside remains the envy of the world.
However, with the Dales facing its greatest crisis since the 2001 foot-andmouth outbreak because of changing demographics, and a dearth of opportunities for younger people, it needs a politician like Michael Gove mucking in – literally – for the Government to realise the rural economy’s wider value and importance.