Park finds enough income to expand work despite cuts
NATIONAL PARK guardians have said they are on course to selfgenerate sufficient funding to extend its work despite rising staff costs and declining government grants.
A meeting of the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority’s finance committee will today hear budget proposals to support ambitions ranging from improving footpaths to a more proactive approach to enforcing building development rules. The park authority’s treasurer Richard Burnett said due to a series of successful bids for funding the body would be undertaking “substantially more work than we were five years ago”.
Ahead of austerity, the authority had received 80 per cent of its funding from government grants, he said, but that had now fallen to 60 per cent.
Mr Burnett said: “It looks like we will be achieving a lot of new projects, but we are becoming increasingly reliant on finding oneoff grants.
“It is riskier, but the risks are worth taking.”
He added that staff costs were rising due to taking on people for new projects and paying higher wages.
Mr Burnett said while staff salaries were set to rise from 53 per cent of the authority’s income this year to 63 per cent in four years, it was hoped success in obtaining grants would be successful.
Members will hear the authority’s medium term financial strategy shows the body was on course to fund planned expenditure of up to £8.2m annually.
He said objectives supported in the coming year include natural flood management schemes.
Other features of the budget include monitoring and enforcement of building developments and a focus to improve the condition of footpaths in new areas of the park.
The authority said another key objective would be promoting understanding of the national park.
It said the Park especially wanted to reach under-represented groups and young people, and to develop schemes such as cycle routes and educational activities.