Could national park entry fee bridge gap in funding from cuts?

NEW DERBYSHIRE LEADER SAYS THE SMALL CHARGE WOULD BE 'ACCEPTABLE'

- By OSCAR FISHER

THE chief executive of the Peak District National Park Authority has called for government support as it looks to bridge the funding gap caused by “cuts” to grants that go to the national park.

It comes after the government reduced its funding to the national park by “nearly nine per cent,” according to chief executive Phil Mulligan who says it’s “about time” the government considers alternative ways of funding national parks.

In February, the authority confirmed that it had approved a number of redundancies and service cuts as part of a plan driven by the need to reduce costs.

Mr Mulligan said the authority was facing a “very challenging” financial landscape due to the fixed government grant that does not take into account inflation and additional pressures such as the recent increase in employers' National Insurance contributions, the rise in the minimum wage and the ending of the government's rate relief scheme.

He has put forward the idea of charging individual visitors to the Peak District, which is currently visited by around 20 million people per year, and Derbyshire County Council’s new leader, Alan Graves, says the small charge would be “acceptable”.

Mr Mulligan says if each of those visitors were charged 10p then it would “more than make up” for the government cuts and a £1 charge would eliminate the need for core government grants altogether.

“We have had ten years of real terms government cuts in the grants that go to English National Parks, with nearly nine per cent cut from this year’s revenue grant alone,” he said.