Douglas Chalmers, chief executive of Friends of the Lake District, highlights the importance of our national parks

OUR local media has been able to fill many recent column inches by highlighting some of the differences of opinion shared – or rather not shared – by the many organisations, groups and individuals who all rightly want to demonstrate their passion for the Lake District and their opinion on how it should be managed.

As a National Park, everyone has a legitimate interest in the Lake District, not just the park authority - those who own and manage the land, environmental interests, the visitor economy and its customers, other businesses and very importantly, those who live in it.

The Lake District National Park Partnership is made up of 25 organisations from the public, private, community and voluntary sectors, committed to “work together in the best interest of the National Park, its environment, communities, economy and visitors”.

Friends of the Lake District is one of these organisations and we are very clear that those who manage the park should be the custodians of our special landscape for the many millions of people who care for it and want to see it protected and enhanced.

The Park Authority is in the process of reviewing its Local Plan, which will play an important role in how the park will look in the future. How our towns and villages will develop, how we look after our environment, developing all strands of the local economy, improving leisure facilities and how to address our traffic issues.

Starting at the end of November, the current version of the reviewed plan will come before Government inspectors to check whether the proposals are positively prepared, justified, effective and consistent with national policy.

We, with others, will attend this Inspection to put our thoughts into the process – where we agree, where we would see change and where we oppose.

Our organisation has been celebrating its 85th anniversary this year. Friends of the Lake District was set up to campaign for the creation of the National Park and continued after its establishment in 1951 to provide a level of scrutiny to its management.

As well as trawling through our own history, our work towards an extension to the Lake District National Park’s southern boundaries gave me the excuse to read the works of Dower and Hobhouse, instrumental in the creation of all our National Parks.

They and their contemporaries truly understood not just the wonder of our landscapes, but the wide-ranging benefits they provide us with. They wanted national parks to be special places, but accessible to be enjoyed and appreciated by everyone.

Even then it was about more than physical recreation. Wellbeing and mindfulness might be the words of the moment, but the parks’ forefathers certainly understood the concepts and their value.

They wanted our protected landscapes to provide a vital antidote to what they saw was an increasingly urbanised and machine-driven world. Surely they would think this even more important now for today’s electronic/internet generation, running our lives by the 24/7 micro-processing power that we seem to carry everywhere.

Our national parks were also a reward to the nation’s people after the appalling years of the Second World War. Even in the depths of that dark conflict, the Government of the time had the foresight to start the process.

Now, we are thankfully not at war but the voluble differences of opinion and noisy intolerance that permeates society from Parliament down is surely an indication that we should look again towards these special places for refreshment.

Because we do live in a very special place. We should neither take it for granted, act irresponsibly nor wilfully damage it. We are simply looking after it for future generations.