Sir, National Parks were designated in 1949 in order to give the landscape quality of the park a recognised status and to bring into play opportunities for open air recreation.

Because it would be incompatible to allow a differently controlled planning authority to operate within the area of a national park authority, those authorities were given the "normal planning controls" which would otherwise have been operated by the local authority, eg: Cumbria County Council.

National parks are of interest and concern to us all.

It would, therefore, be quite wrong for national park authorities to be both elected and controlled solely by the inhabitants of the national park who may not necessarily have the same interests as the rest of the country, eg the recent local furore over the 10 mph speed limit on Windermere.

Local business people want more and more tourists of all kinds, regardless of what damage they may do to the special amenities a national park has to offer.

Therefore, the only satisfactory way to create a national park authority is nationally, making sure that both local and national opinions are represented, as is the case at present.

National parks are not the only "undemocratically elected" bodies that affect us.

Hospital authorities are the most obvious example but there are also hundreds of "quangos".

Does Mr Rayner (Letters & Opinions, January 5) suggest that we should have elections, local or national, for all these bodies, as well as national park authorities?

It is difficult enough to persuade people to vote at local and national elections to provide us with essential national and local government.

BR Oakley, Windermere