Costs and spending
How much do National Parks cost?
All National Parks are funded from central government, not from the people who live there.
This is how much money each National Park Authority was given for 2008/09:
| Authority | £ funding |
| Brecon Beacons National Park | 4,548,672 |
| Broads | 4,304,337 |
| Cairngorms National Park | 4,546,000 |
| Dartmoor National Park | 4,715,643 |
| Exmoor National Park | 3,956,834 |
| Lake District National Park | 6,890,824 |
| Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park | 6,760,000 |
| New Forest National Park | 4,010,965 |
| Northumberland National Park | 3,291,563 |
| North York Moors National Park | 5,402,230 |
| Peak District National Park | 8,264,281 |
| Pembrokeshire Coast National Park | 4,763,382 |
| Snowdonia National Park | 6,054,610 |
| Yorkshire Dales National Park | 5,372,616 |
They do not all get the same amount of money.
Look at the facts and figures, and you will see that the size of the National Park, the number of people who live there and the number of visitors who go there all have an effect of the amount of funding the National Park Authority gets.
National Park Authorities also get some money from other sources such as the European Union and from earning money themselves.
What do National Parks spend the money on?
Each National Park Authority decides what they will spend their money on, so they are all slightly different. But spending can be categorised into nine main areas. Here are the figures for three National Park Authorities spending in 2008/09:
| Spending on | Brecon Beacons | Dartmoor | Lake District | |
| 1 | Conserving the Natural Environment | 4% | 14% | 7% |
| 2 | Conserving cultural heritage | 3% | 7% | 4% |
| 3 | Planning - controlling development | 15% | 16% | 10% |
| 4 | Planning - policies and communities | 9% | 7% | 8% |
| 5 | Promoting learning and understanding | 24% | 18% | 28% |
| 6 | Recreation management and transport | 6% | 9% | 1% |
| 7 | Wardens, estate workers and volunteers | 21% | 19% | 21% |
| 8 | Running the organisation | 17% | 7% | 12% |
| 9 | Other | 2% | 3% | 7% |
