Conservation work continuing in North York Moors National Park despite spending squeeze, officials say

A rising amount of work to conserve and improve North York Moors National Park is going ahead despite a continuing squeeze on its central government funding and mounting budget risks, a meeting has heard.

The North York Moors National Park Authority’s finance committee were told while it was proposed to cut the amount of grants it gives for work such as conservation next year, the move masked the increasing spending and efforts to fulfil its main statutory purposes.

Members were told while pressure was again rising around its core government funding, its income  from sources such as car parking fees and planning charges were helping the authority to provide match-funding from external sources.

The meeting heard the cutbacks would not mean an decrease in activity on the ground, with the reverse being seen in areas such as tree planting.

Officers said the authority was also facing growing financial risks, with an unknown level of Government funding following March 2020, possible “radical impacts” from Brexit, legal costs and match-funding requirements, but despite this action would continue fighting to increase external funding.

They told the meeting the authority was set to reduce its funding for apprentices and grants it gave for community schemes from £212,000 to £118,000 for the coming  year to balance its books.

Officers said as the authority gave a large number of grants through other sources, its goals could be achieved despite the discretionary grant cutbacks.

The authority’s chief executive Andy Wilson said: “The total amount of money that the authority is spending on these things if all our plans went ahead would be increasing by a lot.”

Mr Wilson pointed towards the millions of pounds of funding the authority had attracted for large-scale landscape improvement schemes such as This Exploited Land of Iron and Ryevitalise.

Sounding a note of caution, he added: “There is an issue as to where the money comes from and what you define as a grant, but I think it’s important we are spending a lot more in these areas and the issue is that requires staff to do it.

“We can’t go on doing everything. This could be the future and there could continue to be a shift towards this. For the time being the good thing is we are protecting in the years afterwards those core grants.”