As the ongoing saga of maintaining access to the Peak District National Park rolls on the Trail Riders Fellowship has told the park’s jobsworths to stop wasting public money. The TRF says the Park Authority has wasted almost £70,000 of a £100,000 budget attempting to ban vehicles from using the park’s green lanes but, it says, not a single lane has been closed.
So far the PDNPA has spent nearly £10,000 on legal advice as it tries to impose Traffic Regulation Orders on some to the Peak District’s roads, which attract visitors on two and four wheels from all over the country.
It has also spent almost £50,000 on additional staffing costs, and still faces a bill from the High Court for its illegal attempt to impose an Experimental Traffic Regulation Order on the Chapel Gate road. This was overturned following legal action by the Trail Riders Fellowship. The bill is likely to approach £10,000. The cash has all come from a budget of £100,000 which was agreed by Park Authority members at a meeting in December 2011. Originally, the intention was to close 36 of the park’s lanes.
Mike Irving of the TRF said: “Their budget is nearly gone and not one lane has been closed. Now is the time for the authority to have the courage to call an end to this wasteful process, and engage instead with the Peaks and Derbyshire Vehicle Users Group to find ways in which accommodation can be made to suit all classes of user.
“Motorised users have access to just one or two per cent of the unsurfaced rights of way in the Peak Park. Those who don’t wish to encounter the occasional motor vehicle while they are in the park have all the footpaths, bridleways and restricted byways to choose from, plus all the right-to-roam lands. We fail to see why the PDNPA is seeking to restrict the few vehicular routes that there are left, and can only ask the question: ‘Who is pulling the strings of this unelected body, and why?’”