With rolling hills stretching to the coast, the South Downs are one of Britain’s most popular tourist attractions, immortalised by poets from William Blake to Alfred Lord Tennyson. Already an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, a swathe of the downs, from Twyford in the west to Beachy Head in the east, is set to become Britain’s 15th national park – or so the backers of the South Downs Campaign hope.

As part of a drive launched in 1990, members of the group will this week present the government with a petition, in the form of a giant postcard covered in signatures, asking it to grant the South Downs this coveted status this year. This would coincide with the 60th anniversary of the Act that set up the parks.

“Our national parks encompass some of the most beautiful and valued landscapes in England and must be conserved for the benefit of all, now and in the future,” says the writer Bill Bryson, who is president of the Campaign to Protect Rural England and a vociferous supporter of the campaign. National park status boosts an area, say its champions; property prices go up and the landscape, in all its beauty, is protected in perpetuity.

What else, though, would a change in the area’s status mean for the people who live there? Judging by the experiences of some of those who live in Britain’s national parks, they should brace themselves for a series of rules governing what they can – and cannot – do to their homes.

You wouldn’t think, for example, that keeping a horse would require planning permission, but in certain circumstances it can – and the New Forest National Park Authority has risked the wrath of locals with proposals to tighten those criteria. Anyone who keeps horses in a field subdivided into pony paddocks, or gives them feed, or “rugs them up” in the winter, for example, would need to apply for consent.

Under the plan, permission would be required to keep a single horse on less than 2½ acres of land – treble the current minimum. “It would basically make equestrianism within the forest almost impossible,” says Tina Cant, a member of the action group Forest Uprising, which is fighting the proposals. “This is excessive conservationism.”

Cant, 47, who has lived in the New Forest since she was a small child, rents six acres, on which she keeps four ponies – under new rules, she would be allowed only two. Two of the group’s supporters have moved out of the area; the proposal, still being considered, could also be bad news for anyone running an equestrian business there.

Or how about the Peak District? Nobody would deny the need to protect its natural beauty, but would this really be adversely affected by one man’s attempt to make something out of a series of unused barns? That was what John Pearce, 63, was left asking after a series of run-ins with the National Park Authority that cost him endless time and thousands of pounds in architects’ fees (some of which he eventually clawed back after a legal battle).

Pearce, whose family has lived in the area since the 19th century, was once a dairy farmer; in the early 1990s, when this was no longer economically viable, he converted some farm buildings into a craft centre. When foot-and-mouth later destroyed that business, he applied to the park authority for permission to turn the buildings into holiday cottages – a process he describes as “torture”.

“It was dealt with in an extremely obstructive way,” he says. “At almost every stage they were unreasonable – you assume you’ve got some sort of agreement with them until you go to the next level and find they didn’t really mean what they were saying.

“It was a war of attrition. The perpetual wasting of architects’ time, and my money, was particularly galling.”

Of course, you could argue that those who move into a national park should accept the restrictions they might be subject to: after all, living in a protected area comes at a price. As New Forest inhabitants have discovered, though, homeowners can be left helpless at the hands of an authority that some feel does not always have their best interests at heart.

“A national park is a statutory body, with its own planning department, which has unbridled access to the land under its jurisdiction,” says Martin Lamb, director of the Exeter office of Savills estate agency. “The result is that a decision can be taken to create a ‘honeypot’ – for example, a car park adjacent to a property – and the owner has absolutely no control or recourse to a higher authority.”

As far as the South Downs is concerned, Henry Smith, the leader of West Sussex county council, remains sceptical about the benefits of the change in status. The remit of a National Park Authority is to bring extra visitors to the area, he argues, and this will add to the environmental pressure in an already densely populated and heavily visited area.

Smith is also concerned about the potential for development on the boundary of a new park. “I know at the moment nobody’s laying any bricks, but that will pass, and you could see significant pressure on the periphery.” This could support the prices of houses within the park, but put downward pressure on those just outside.

Supporters are not put off by these arguments, retorting that national park authorities also have a duty to foster the social wellbeing of their communities. And such worries seem unlikely to stop the campaigners for the South Downs National Park.

“This is unspoilt countryside in a densely populated area,” says Caroline Gibden, who sits on the South Downs joint committee – a precursor to a National Park Authority that advises on issues such as planning control in the area.

“People are loath to encounter change. “I am a landowner in the South Downs myself. If I thought there was anything negative about the proposal, I wouldn’t be in favour of it.”

Still want to live in a national park?

Dartmoor, £895,000
The Great Hall, in Lustleigh, is a Grade I-listed 14th-century house in four acres on Dartmoor National Park. It has been totally renovated.

Knight Frank; 01392 423111, knightfrank.co.uk

New Forest, £395,000
Three-bedroom Thimble Cottage, in East Boldre, a small village in the New Forest National Park, has views across Bagshot Moor.

Paul Jackson; 01590 674411, www.pauljackson.co.uk

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