Staff angry over threat to Peak District visitor centres

Joyce Janes has worked for the Bakewell centre for almost 20 years

Staff from four Peak District visitor centres threatened with closure have spoken of their anger at the plans.

In February, the Peak District National Park Authority said it was reviewing the future of centres in Castleton, Bakewell, Edale and Bamford as it looks to cut costs.

The centres currently host about 400,000 visitors per year.

The authority said a full consultation was ongoing but no final decision would be made until 28 July.

The plans have put more than 66 jobs at risk.

Joyce Janes, who has worked for the Bakewell visitor centre on a casual basis for almost 20 years, said she had seen a new organisational chart that did not include her or her colleagues.

She said businesses and visitors would suffer without the centres

"So it looks as if the decision has been made. It's shocking," she said.

She said without the centre, both tourists to the national park and businesses would suffer.

"We're sort of a centre for anybody who has an event," she said.

"People bring posters in and tell us things that are going on in the town.

"The staff, the team we've got are brilliant, so knowledgeable. And the visitors will be the ones who suffer but once it's gone, it's gone."

Staff said their visitor book was full of messages of support

Another member of staff, who did not want to be named, said they would feel anger and sadness if the decision were made to close the centres.

"I think there's probably some anger, particularly at a time when the performance of the centres has been good," they said.

"Staff used to be proud to work for the national park. Not so now, I'm afraid, and that's really sad.

"I appreciate it's a cost, but it's providing a service."

A recent Peak District authority meeting heard the visitor centres had recently outperformed budget forecasts by about £60,000.

There have been suggestions an online chat facility and mobile marquee centre staffed by volunteers could replace the centres.

Unison said a recent £440,000 one-off grant from the government for national parks, announced earlier this year, should have been used towards offsetting the costs of the centres.

In a recent letter to MPs, the union said: "The government has already allocated an extra £440k, specifically to use in areas like visitor centres during the cost-of-living crisis.

"The authority is diverting this money into a new pay structure."

The Peak District National Park Authority's CEO Phil Mulligan said it had faced a decade of real-term cuts to its government grant of about 40%.

"Our annual grant is now the same as it was in 2012-13 and operations such as our visitor centres have been operating at a loss of up to £190,000 per year for the last few years of this unprecedented financial squeeze.

"The government have made clear that National Park Authorities have discretion on how the recent one-off Defra grant of £440,000 may be spent.

"However the one-off nature of the grant means that it does not offer a long-term solution to underlying affordability concerns of some operations.

"Whilst proposed pay increases will proportionately affect those in higher pay bands more noticeably, this is due to current pay discrepancies being at their greatest in these roles."

Defra said it was for individual national park authorities to decide how best to use the funding to achieve the aims for their area.

It added the annual core grant for authorities was £48.7m in 2022-23, which represented a 9% increase.

The authority added: "We appreciate the stress and worry that people are experiencing as a result of the proposed changes to our visitor centres.

"We're very conscious of how the staff are feeling as we ask them to continue delivering their excellent customer services while we investigate potential new sources of income and explore alternative ways of engaging visitors."

He said the restructure could lead to "redeployment opportunities" for current staff.