Safeguarding the landscape of Britain’s first national park
A Brief History
We began in 1924 as Sheffield Association for the Protection of Local Scenery. In 1927 we became a branch of the Council for the Preservation of Rural England representing Sheffield and the Peak District. There was no statutory planning control, no Green Belt, and the Peak District was not a national park.
Our first big success came in 1931, when we raised funds to buy the Longshaw Estate and save it from development. We handed it over to the National Trust for future preservation. In 1932 the first Town and Country Planning Act was passed, and six years later Sheffield introduced the very first plans to protect countryside from urban sprawl.
Take Back the Tracks
Since 2014 the Peak District National Park Authority has issued at least five permanent Traffic Regulation Orders (TRO) in order to ‘conserve nature and the quiet enjoyment of the wild landscape’. The bans are on Long Causeway, The Roych, Chapelgate, Leys Lane and Derby Lane, and all exclude trail-bikes, quad-bikes and 4x4s but not wheelchairs or electric disability scooters and trampers.
The decisions all follow public consultations in which the Authority received thousands of responses, the majority supporting a vehicle ban in each case.
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