When Henry Smith became leader of West Sussex County Council, it was hoped he would bring a fresh outlook to local issues.

Unfortunately, he appears to have taken up the council's misinformed stance against a South Downs National Park with a renewed zeal (Letters, February 1).

Seizing on reduced budgets for national parks in the next year or so is ill-advised, bearing in mind, in the same week, his own council has announced another 95 job losses, following the 85 made last year, due to its grant settlement.

The facts are that national park authority budgets are far larger than those of the South Downs Joint Committee (the body currently managing the South Downs) and they have received a big increase in funding over the past five years.

The South Downs Joint Committee (SDJC) receives exceptional funding from the Countryside Agency because it was a short-term experiment to see whether conservation boards were a practical option for managing Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB).

This funding has been to the detriment of the other 36 AONBs in England and will not continue if the South Downs does not become a national park, not least because it would be unfair on the other AONBs.

What Henry Smith has failed to do is explain how he is going to pick up the shortfall in funding which will arise if he is successful in stopping the national park.

Just to stand still, the SDJC will need a big increase in funding from local council taxpayers.

He says conservation of the South Downs must come first, while at the same time his authority wants to see large new roads built in and around the Downs.

He talks of a strengthened South Downs Conservation Board (SDCB) yet opposes handing over planning powers to a national park authority, one of the key powers a Conservation Board would need to properly protect the South Downs, particularly in the face of massive house-building plans for the South-East.

Finally, he says SDCB members would be answerable to the electorate at the ballot box, while a national park authority is an "undemocratic quango".

Yet a conservation board's membership is not directly elected and is similar to that of a national park authority.

-Robin Crane CBE, chairman, South Downs Campaign, Cocking Causeway, Midhurst