By Betsy Everett

WHEN he left school in Barnsley at the age of 16, disillusioned and directionless, David Butterworth’s career plan was, to put it mildly, sketchy.

“I wanted to be a social worker or maybe a Formula 1 racing driver,” says the man who is now chief executive of the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority.

The year was 1980 and the start of an era of industrial decline that saw the virtual end of Britain’s mining industry: his father was a miner at Grimethorpe colliery.

“Unemployment was going through the roof, and there were so few opportunities for youngsters like me,” he says.

Still, after a year on government training schemes, he did get a job: with Barnsley Council as a stores assistant where, thanks to a boss who recognised a spark in the 17-year-old that the schoolteachers had obviously missed, he embarked on a two-year ONC (ordinary national certificate) course in business studies. It was one night a week, and paid for by the council.

“I only agreed to it to shut him up. I’d hated school and didn’t want any more of it. But for me it was a turning point: I absolutely loved it. The stimulation of listening to lectures, the fact you could argue and debate and that you were treated like a grown-up was a revelation.”

He remained in part-time education until he was 29 and married with two young children (he now has four), adding a higher national certificate and an honours degree to his tally of qualifications.

His eventual love of, and respect for, education is partly what drives him in his current role as head of the authority which protects the second-biggest national park in England, covering some 1,800 square kilometres of a precious but fragile landscape.

At a meeting of UDAP (the Upper Dales Area Partnership) in January, Mr Butterworth surprised everybody with his uncompromising statement that Britain "hates" its young people, making it difficult for them to get to school in rural areas, because of transport costs, then overloading them with debt when they get to university.

And if that sounds like a mildly – or even very – political statement, it’s spoken from the heart, by someone who had to change schools 40 years ago because his parents couldn’t afford the bus fares. And in any case the remit of the authority, be it environment, housing, education or transport – and it encompasses all of them - is inevitably political, 77 per cent of its income coming as it does from central government.

The contribution is almost certain to be cut in the next five years as it has in the past, by around 40 per cent since 2005. And, says Mr Butterworth, it’s going to get worse as the DEFRA budget, unlike some areas of government spending, is not protected.

“The fact is that whoever ends up running the country after the election there are going to be more cuts, more austerity, more belt-tightening,” he says. “There are three ways we can deal with that: we can sit around and moan about it, slice bits off the budget here and there so we end up doing nothing properly, or we can get off our backsides and do something about it.” It’s the language of the Barnsley miner’s son, not the senior civil servant.

And so the authority now has a planned programme of fees, service charges, commercial sponsorship and marketing on the table, and every aspect of its work and practice is under scrutiny.

He doesn’t mince his words on the thorny problem of housing in the national park, either.

“The biggest single blow to housing in rural areas has been the right-to-buy scheme. It has smashed the market. In the 30 years since it was introduced we’ve lost about 3,000 council houses in the Dales which for most people were the first step on the ladder towards home ownership. It enabled them to get established and to save up towards a home of their own. Modest houses that gave average earners a roof over their head are now selling for around £230/240,000.”

He is also vocal on a recent government decision which means developers building five or fewer dwellings in the national park no longer have an obligation to provide affordable homes subsidies.

“That announcement was sneaked out on Friday afternoon just before Christmas. It was a bloke at a desk in Whitehall who issued the dictat but it was the politicians standing behind him who’d made the decision. But only after consultation – when 345 out of 350 respondents said it was a bad idea,” he says.

It means a substantial cut in the number of affordable homes on 30 sites in the national park allocated for housing. The authority itself is doing what it can to encourage more housing – being more sympathetic to applications for the conversion of roadside barns, for example, and reviewing ‘local occupancy’ clauses to remove obstacles to mortgage lending – but in the end real change can only come through national policies.

“It’s a national problem, and overall can only be solved by radical decisions taken by governments. In the meantime we’re working with local councils, landowners, farmers and developers to do the best for the future of the park. It’s all we can do,” he says. Sounding, just for a minute, quite diplomatic.