Harry Mead writes a personal criticism of the North York Moors National Park Authority's 'open' recommendation on the plan for a massive potash mine

WHAT a colossal abdication of responsibility. After four years of doubtless earnest consideration, the planners of the North York Moors National Park Authority have chosen to make no recommendation on the plan for what would be the world’s biggest potash mine, near Whitby.

Strictly speaking they’ve made an “open” recommendation, which sounds more positive. But the reality is abject surrender, a pathetic throwing in of the towel.

The park authority seems to have lost the vision that, 70 years ago, infused the report by Yorkshireman John Dower, born and bred in Ilkley, which led to the creation of our national parks. Walker and writer as well a senior civil servant, in which capacity he had been invited to produce his report, he enthused about the idea in The Dalesman. He saw it as a “positive job of maintaining and enhancing beauty”.

Of course “maintaining” means protecting. And what is being protected is landscape awarded the highest designation for its beauty and the need to save it for the nation. Not too long ago, a chairman of the North York Moors authority affirmed in the annual report “our resolve to conserve the North York Moors”. Apparently, that resolve has now dissolved like sugar in weak tea.

To justify its lame capitulation, the park’s planning head, Chris France, cites a similar “open recommendation” by the Lake District National Park over a controversial zip wire. But two wrongs don’t make a right. Intended to run from near the top of Fleetwith Pike to Honister Pass, the zip wire will have users whooping and hollering among the fells where others simply want to enjoy a peaceful walk to the summit – the quintessential Lakeland thing. Seemingly more committed to a branding of the Lake District as the “UK’s Adventure Capital”, the Lake District National Park Authority, too, seems to be forgetting, or abandoning, the vision of the pioneers.

The pro-mine lobby focuses on the predicted 1,000 jobs. How many will be lost? The company itself concedes a four per cent drop in local tourism. But there’s a wider threat. Chosen partly because, in his words, “there was no industrial blemish”, the route of Wainwright’s Coast to Coast Walk, Britain’s most popular long-distance trek, which might well sustain 1,000 jobs along its 192-mile length, passes virtually alongside the mine. How many will it lose when trekkers learn that, near the climax, where they emerge from the delectable valley of Littlebeck, they will come smack up against a major industrial complex?

Until a few years ago a mere committee, the national park authority needs to remember its upgraded status: authority. That’s what it must show. A recommendation to approve the mine would be better than meekly sitting on its hands. But a clue to what should be its attitude is contained in the statutory terms of its duties. These state that if caring for the landscape conflicts with fostering “social and economic wellbeing”, the authority shall “attach greater weight to the purposes of conserving and enhancing the natural beauty of the national park”.

Couldn’t be clearer. It shouldn’t have taken the authority more than four minutes, never mind four years, to come up with a firm response.

Potash mine on the doorstep of Whitby and almost flanking the heritage coast near Robin Hood's Bay? No way.