An innovative fund helping individuals, community groups, and businesses in England's National Parks has been judged a success after its first 18 months.

An independent report completed by the Centre for European Protected Areas Research at the University of London, has monitored the English National Parks Sustainable development Fund over its first year and a half of operation.


The Fund, which was the personal initiative of Rural Affairs Minister
Alun Michael, has also won the strong endorsement of the National Park
Authorities. It aims to foster the principles of sustainability within
the National Parks and supports a huge variety of projects, from wildlife
to recreation and activity centres; from green transport to educational
facilities; from developing alternative energy sources to sourcing produce
locally; and from training in traditional countryside skills to developing
ecological and affordable housing. Over three hundred such projects have
been helped to date.


Alun Michael, Minister for Rural Affairs, said:
“This report shows the great commitment of the communities of the National
Parks to building upon their environmental and cultural heritage with
innovative ideas. It is reinforcing Defra's key principle of sustainable
development by enabling people to come up with ideas that benefit the
environment, the community and the economy.


“The recipients have been tremendously resourceful in using a relatively
small amount of money to lever in funds from elsewhere and make some tangible
changes on the ground. In just eighteen months the Fund has secured match
funding of over £13million.

“But there is plenty of room for improvement. I hope to see more projects
linking urban and rural communities and encouraging the involvement of young
people, disabled people, and groups who are traditionally less likely to
benefit from the Parks”.

Pam Warhurst, Deputy Chair of the Countryside Agency, commented: “For me the most interesting of the fringe benefits associated with the
scheme is the way it has broken down barriers and brought an entirely new
constituency of local people into contact with the National Parks”.


On qualifying the success of the Fund, the report's authors at the Centre
for European Protected Areas Research conclude that:

“Sustainability is an idea, not a recipe, and raises questions to which there
are no universal or immediate answers. [The Sustainable Development Fund]
has amply proved its worth, not just for the immediate benefits that projects
have brought to their participants and local communities, but in identifying
possibilities for delivering on the fundamentals of sustainability which
may subsequently be developed elsewhere.”

Defra will now work with the National Parks' Sustainable Development Officers'
and the Countryside Agency to consider how 20 detailed recommendations about
the future of the Fund should be taken forward.

In all cases, applicants must demonstrate that their project will:

  • further National Park purposes
  • be sustainable (against the test of economic, social and environmental
    sustainability);

  • have the support or involvement of communities;
  • be complementary to key local and national strategies, e.g. Local Agenda 21;
  • not breach state aid rules.

The lowest grants to date include £120 for a day's portaloo rental for a
disabled ramblers' event, £122 for two wormery composters for a village
primary school and two grants of £308 and £330 to the Park Ranger Service
towards the provision of waterproof clothing, rucksacks and mobile phones
for mentally and physically handicapped children and adults on ranger-led
walks and activities. The latter have already proved their worth in making
countryside activity less daunting particularly in wet weather for otherwise
excluded groups from surrounding towns.

The single highest grant to date is £61,000 to support the heritage and
tourism activities of the Exmoor pony trust. This is followed by two at
£50,000, one towards a demonstration district heating project in Newcastle
involving woodchip biomass technology from Northumberland, the other for a
visitor centre using green building materials in the Broads.

Average reported expenditure on administration is 6% of the fund allocation
and in all cases spend from the Fund is within the 10% ceiling specified in
the Prospectus and in several instances is significantly lower.

Some 51 projects (17% of the total) contribute directly to wildlife
conservation. This includes practical habitat conservation, conservation site
management (and management plans) and related research. Only two projects are
focused directly on Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP) species recovery activities
(relating to dormice in Exmoor, and to juniper in the North York Moors.

Just under a quarter of projects (69 projects, or 23%) were judged to
contribute significantly to 'save, reuse or recycle' (energy, raw material
conservation or to pollution reduction). These include biomass energy and
hydropower and community composting projects.

17 projects (6%) involved the conservation of artefacts or the built
environment. Virtually all of these involved in situ protection and
restoration.

Just under half (143, or 47%) of all projects were deemed to contribute
directly to the local economy, through the generation either of jobs,
or income.

177 projects (59% of the total) contributed significantly to the generation or
retention of valued skills or competencies, or to the generation of knowledge
or understanding relevant to sustainability objectives. This figure covers
a spectrum of very different initiatives, from school based/ educational
projects (these were not included automatically, but only if they seemed
likely to generate understanding directly relevant to Park purposes) through
training designed specifically to preserve or promote valued skills, to
research activities, pilot studies and other projects where new or broader
understanding was a likely to be a specific outcome.

125 projects (41% of the total) involve significant local community or wider
public involvement as an objective.

112 projects (37%, a set significantly overlapping with community projects
above) feature social inclusion or equality of opportunity as an objective.