Local people who have hoped that the NPA would show concern over issues affecting local communities have been disappointed over several issues recently. It seems clear that the NPA have abandoned any pretence that they have a duty to 'foster the interests' of local people and in a way that is fine - we now know where we stand.
The matter of the Ambleside Methodist Hall being referred by the NPA for listed building status, thereby jeopardising its use for conversion to affordable homes and by extension the financing of the new parish hall, is a recent case in point. Protests from local councillors no doubt had some effect in the decision by English Heritage that the building should not be listed. The NPA has avoided making its own position clear.
More recently attempts by Ambleside traders to have ice-cream barrow salesmen banned from the Market Cross area have been met with a shrug of the shoulders from the NPA who don't think this a planning issue. Some people may think it is. But the NPA decides and they have ruled. Tough luck on the rate-paying permanent shopkeepers selling ice cream. Pie and hot-dog stalls next?
The NPA are about to sign up to an agreement with the MOD over low flying by military aircraft. This is to evade once and for all the pressure being put on them over the issue. Most people would agree that there is nothing more inimical to the quiet enjoyment of the National Park than these aircraft. The noise of powerboats, scarcely audible to anyone not on the lake or shore, was sufficient to have that activity controversially banned by the NPA from Windermere. But regular screaming jets at 250 ft which seriously affect the enjoyment of thousands, that's apparently going to be nodded through as OK, making a travesty of the 'quiet enjoyment must prevail' attitude of the NPA on every other matter.
It seems that the NPA are now solely concerned with the natural environment. Woodland, rare plants, threatened species, these all matter. Local people don't. In a blinkered view of human needs, including the necessity to make a living in the landscape, pursue commercial interests and the jobs which depend on them, the NPA is concerned only with views, the visual aspect, the preservation of a landscape long despoiled from its natural state by thousands of pre-NPA years of human activity. In pursuing this arbitrary notion, all new local buildings must look like 200 year old barns.
It really is time that the statutory duties of all National Park Authorities were reviewed, this time with the realisation that no landscape can be preserved in aspic, and that local communities are also under threat of disintegration, and that they cannot be expected forever to accept that their interests come second to those of visitors, badgers, toads and scenery.
I wonder what would happen if a local resident were to challenge in the European Court of Human Rights a ruling by the NPA that he must roof his new property in local slate at four times the price of alternative materials, with no help available towards the difference in cost? Only the Brits would tolerate this blatant discrimination . . .