Peak District entry fee idea put forward

The Peak District welcomes about 13m visitors every year

Charging tourists to visit the Peak District could be the solution to "unprecedented" financial woes, according to the leader of the authority running the national park.

The Peak District National Park Authority, based in Bakewell in Derbyshire, says it has had a 50% real terms funding cut over the last decade, while grappling with issues like wildfires and dangerous parking.

But chief executive Phil Mulligan said it "wouldn't need any government funding" if it could charge 10p per visitor.

A spokesperson for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said it was providing national parks with a capital uplift of £15m.

The Peak District became the UK's first national park around 75 years ago and is a major tourist attraction, welcoming about 13 million visitors every year.

Pressures due to a fixed government grant that has not accounted for inflation or other costs, such as the rise in the minimum wage, have been blamed for the authority's financial troubles.

Popular routes like Snake Pass attract millions of visitors a year

Speaking to Politics East Midlands, Mr Mulligan said: "We have the pressure of visitors, we have the pressure of delivering for the nation in terms of the ecological crisis - the climate crisis.

"I'm trying to do that with an ever-declining set of government funds, at a time when what's being asked of the national park is more and more.

"I think that [charging tourists fees] is a big discussion that government is going to need to have.

"But what would be the mechanism for that? I haven't got the powers."

Mr Mulligan said 10% of the authority's staff had been made redundant in recent months in response to "declining funding".

"If [the government] are going to keep cutting our funding then there is going to need to be a different way of funding national parks," he added.

Alan Graves, the Reform UK leader of Derbyshire County Council, said he would back the idea of visitors being charged "up to £1 just to go there".

He added: "[Charging tourists] sounds like a good idea, but we need to be very careful we don't frighten people off.

"So long as it's not too expensive, I think people visiting the national park will contribute. Maybe up to £1 just to go there.

"The real difficulty is how do you police that... because there's no point in having these expensive cameras to do that.

"But in principle, it sounds like it's a good idea."

A spokesperson for Defra said: "Our national parks are a source of great national pride which is why this government is providing them with a capital uplift of £15m.

"This is in addition to the £400m we are investing in restoring nature across the country."