National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949 - Definition and Overview

The National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949 is the UK Act of Parliament which facilitated the creation of national parks in England and Wales. The Act was passed in 1949 with all party support, as part of the reconstruction of the UK by the Labour Party government after World War II.

The Act following reports by:

• a Government committee chaired by Christopher Addison (later Lord Addison) in 1931,
• John Dower, secretary of the Standing Committee on National Parks, to the Minister of Town and Country Planning in 1945, and
• a Government committee chaired by Sir Arthur Hobhouse in 1947, which proposed 12 national parks.

The first 10 British national parks were designated as such in the 1950s under the Act in mostly poor-quality agricultural upland. An eleventh 'national park' in the Norfolk and Suffolk Broads was set up by a special Act of Parliament in 1988 (strictly speaking, this is not a national park, but the differences are sufficiently small that this entity is always regarded as being "equivalent to" a national park). Two more areas are in the process of being designated as a national parks, the New Forest and the South Downs (the last of the 12 areas chosen in the 1947 Hobhouse Report which has yet to become a national park).

The structure set up by the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949 was amended by the Environment Act 1995, under which each national park is now operated by its own National Park Authority.

See also

• National parks of the United Kingdom
• National parks of England and Wales