CONTENTIOUS plans for the long-term future of the New Forest National Park have been postponed because of the weight of public comment.

The announcement came the day Sue Baillie of campaign group One Voice addressed the National Park Authority at Efford.

One Voice is mainly opposed to plans to close car parks to limit dog walking in the forest and tighter planning restrictions on keeping horses.

She asked members what arrangements had been made to engage with the public on the current revision of the Park Plan. There had not been any notification of parish council-hosted meetings for the public to discuss matters affecting them, she said. In addition, only seven parish councils contacted by One Voice had arranged meetings “and the majority of these will be too late to feed into the revisions now being made to the park plan,” she said.

Authority chairman Clive Chatters said the revised timetable was being published in its Park Life magazine.

“I’m looking to the October meeting for the plan to come to this meeting and for members to give their full approval,” he said.

He stressed the authority was working with parish cou-ncils, which he described as “the grass roots of the system”.

In a statement he said: “Given our commitment to listen to the views expressed, we have taken the time to go through the thousands of consultation responses carefully. “In addition we have undertaken an extensive programme of working groups and other meetings to look in detail at the issues that prompted most interest.

“Uppermost in our minds is the need to do justice to the wealth of constructive and critical comments we received during the consultation and in the period since. It simply would not be possible to do this and revise and rewrite the draft Plan in time for July.”

New Forest Dog Owners’ Group secretary Heather Gould said: “As long as they make good use of the time I would think it’s a good thing.”