TODAY’S front page will inevitably lead to fears over the future of the Seven Sisters Country Park – and it should do.

On the face of it, the plan appears sensible.

By transferring management or even selling it off, East Sussex County Council would make huge savings at a time when the local authority is making cuts to frontline services.

You could argue that an organisation such as Sussex Wildlife Trust is better placed to look after such an area.

And, after all, the land is in the South Downs National Park, so nobody is going to be building on it any time soon.

But this does not mean the proposal is without risk.

At the end of the day, if ownership is handed over, the council – and therefore the public – will loose control of perhaps the most iconic piece of Sussex countryside.

The problem could be that, as is so often the case with these schemes, once a private company takes over, its prime motivation is not conservation, it is profit.

So often what happens is that a public asset is taken over and then priorities inevitably change.

Just look at the trains. With the Southern shambles ongoing, the call for nationalisation of the network has been growing and growing.

The importance of the Seven Sisters landscape cannot be underestimated.

For tourism purposes it must draw in thousands each year. If you want a single image to sum up our wonderful county than the Seven Sisters is it.

It is also a place of recreation for thousands each year and it provides a living for many through farms, cafes, camping sites and pubs.

The council’s proposal may sound sensible on paper. But as we have seen on many occasions, it is rarely as simple as that.