Campaigning for the Dales
As an independent educational charity, free of financial and political affiliations, the Society works to ensure that the government, the National Park Authority, Nidderdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and other agencies deliver their promises to care for the Yorkshire Dales.

The Society works to address the following key issues in the Dales:
Transport

Transport, the means we choose to travel to, from or within the Dales, has a major impact on the natural and the man-made environment. Use of motorised vehicles has a range of adverse effects including visual blight and urbanisation caused by parked or moving vehicles, traffic noise, air pollution, risk of accident and injury to humans and wildlife, and congestion. See Transport in the Dales

Affordable Housing

In 2002, the average cost of a house in the Dales was £178,000 which was double the national average at the time. As prices continue to rise in the Dales young people are increasingly being driven out of the area in order to find their own place to live when they leave the family home. The Yorkshire Dales Society actively campaigns for positive measures to address the desperate lack of affordable housing. See Affordable Housing

Campaign For National Parks

The Yorkshire Dales Society is an active member of the Campaign for National Parks which celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2011. See Campaign for National Parks 

Planning

The issue of Planning in the Dales is often a thorny one and The Yorkshire Dales Society helps by providing an independent watchdog role. The National Park Authority is the statutory planning authority for the National Park, which means that by law, they are responsible for dealing with all planning applications and related matters. The YDS is one of the bodies that are invited to comment on every application received by the YDNP. See Planning

Access & Accessibilty

Large areas of the Yorkshire Dales National Park are now accessible to the public as a result of the Countryside and Rights of Way (CRoW) Act 2000 giving people the right to walk freely on designated ‘access’ land without having to stay on footpaths. The Yorkshire Dales Society work to raise awareness of Open Access and the responsibility that comes with it for both users and land manager but also seeks to encourage and support individuals and groups to ensure they receive the many benefits that access to the open countryside of the Dales can bring. See Access & Accessibility

Green Lanes

‘Green lanes’ are the characteristic unsurfaced, walled lanes, or tracks, over open moorland, which in some cases date back to medieval, Roman, pre-Roman or even prehistoric times. Many were monastic in origin, when great abbeys such as Fountains Abbey or Bolton Priory developed the system of outlying granges from the parent monastery. They are unsurfaced lanes and tracks, which create characteristic landscape features and run through, between and across higher Dales, sometimes parallel to modern roads which replaced them after various Turnpike Acts. See Green Lanes

Sustainable Tourism

Every visitor to the Yorkshire Dales is also a tourist, but visitors who stay overnight contribute more the local economy by spending money on overnight accommodation, food, refreshment and ancillaries. All tourism has an impact on the environment and on local communities. The impact is based on the kind of activity and the scale of that activity. See Sustainable Tourism
Website: http://www.yds.org.uk