I READ with increasing anxiety references in your letters and articles to parts of Dorset gaining National Park status.

Let me suggest that those who promote National Park status have nothing other than self-interest and a misplaced ambition to stifle change and innovation.

National Park status introduces entirely unaccountable layers of bureaucracy that will impact on all our lives. The most worrying example of which is the shift in planning control and management from council to a National Park. This county needs more affordable houses in all parts, including the Jurassic Coast. National Park status will only inhibit the development of affordable and rented housing.

Practically, National Park status will only increase the traffic and footfall in the more popular parts of Dorset, that already cannot cope with the strains that tourism places on them. I suspect that integral to the ‘mission statement’ of any National Park is increasing rather than reducing tourism.

This county has councils with directly elected councillors. We should trust them to protect our county – not the National Park. You can change your council at the ballot box.

There is nothing to be gained from National Park status and much to be lost. We should resist all efforts to force us live in a National Park without any say in that decision.

Maybe a referendum on membership is the way forward?

PETER HANDY, Worth Matravers