Lake District ‘needs ethnic mix’ of visitors

Park’s boss says attractions must draw more young and diverse tourists to be truly ‘national’

‘They start to lose their relevance and therefore the very reason for calling it a national park’

NATIONAL parks will no longer deserve the name unless they can attract more young and ethnic minority visitors, the chief executive of the Lake District park authority has said.

Richard Leafe warned that national parks must become more diverse to justify continued public funding.

He said that if the UK’S 15 designated landscapes were seen as exclusive, “they start to lose their relevance and therefore the very reason for calling it a national park”.

The comments follow the publication of a government-commissioned report into the future of Britain’s protected landscapes in September, which criticised national parks for making people feel insufficiently welcome.

The Defra review called for every child to spend at least one night a year under the stars because far too many have lost touch with nature.

Mr Leafe said yesterday: “We are deficient in terms of young people, we are deficient in terms of black and minority ethnic communities and we are not particularly well-visited by those who are less able in terms of their mobility.

“Our challenge is to see what we can do to reverse that, to encourage people from broader backgrounds and a wider range of personal mobilities into the national park to be able to benefit in the same way as those other groups do.”

Mr Leafe spoke as his own Lake District National Park, a Unesco World Heritage site, struggled to balance the demands of accessibility and preservation.

The authority faces a High Court judicial review challenge next year over its refusal to ban four-wheel drive vehicles from certain fell trails.

Keswick Town Council has also passed a vote of no confidence over the creation of a tarmac trail running through woodland.

Mr Leafe’s comments to Sky News provoked criticism online, including from Sir Christopher Meyer, the former UK ambassador to Washington, who tweeted: “The madness and stupidity of our age.”

The Lake District National Park received 19.4million visitors last year, up from 14.8million in 2012. The National Trust, which owns 20 per cent of the Lake District, is currently in discussions with the Highways Agency about banning cars from certain locations.

Kate Willshaw, officer for the Friends of the Lake District, claims there are “honeypots” such as Bowness, Keswick and Windermere, which attract floods of tourists and massive congestion as a result. She said: “They attract people because they are an easy win. You can get to them without driving on single-track roads, and the views are magnificent.”

The first 10 national parks were created in the Fifties following the passing of the National Parks and Access to the

Countryside Act in 1949. The most recent additions are the New Forest, which became a national park in 2005, and the South Downs, which gained the status in 2010.

Unlike many foreign systems, national parks in the UK are usually largely made up of privately owned land and include substantial human settlements. Each park is operated by its own authority, which is under a statutory responsibility to conserve and enhance the natural beauty, wildlife and cultural heritage of the area, as well as to promote opportunities for public understanding and enjoyment.