A TROUBLESHOOTER enlisted to ease South Lakeland District Council's financial woes last year has been hired to help turn around the Lake District National Park Authority's cash crisis.

The Westmorland Gazette can reveal that Graham Essex-Crosby, former chief executive of Blackpool Council and one of three consultants who helped SLDC, has been drafted in to dig the authority out of its financial black hole - which is likely to reach £850,000 by 2007.

Mr Essex-Crosby has been appointed director of the LDNPA's improvement board, where he is working three days a week on a six-month long contract.

The board was set up in the wake of April's National Park Performance Assessment report, a peer review carried out by other national park authorities, which found that the LDNPA's weaknesses outweighed its strengths.

Last week, in another twist of the LDNPA's financial fortunes, members of the authority's 220-strong staff were told by National Park Officer Paul Tiplady that they would probably have to wait until January to hear about the fate of their jobs.

LDNPA finance director Kerry Powell told the Gazette that staff had been told earlier this year that jobs could be on the line.

Ms Powell said that the authority was examining six "key themes" for possible cuts in a bid to save cash.

As well as the possible redundancies these include selling off properties and potentially closing tourist information centres.

Ms Powell added that a final decision on how to plug the authority's financial gap should have been taken at a full meeting of the LDNPA in September but had been put back until January.

Story by Gazette reporters Ruth Lythe and Lisa Frascarelli.