FOUR major rural conservation groups today launch a national campaign against plans to build hundreds of miles of new electricity pylons over areas of national park and green belt land.

There are already 22,000 pylons covering almost 4,500 miles across England and Wales and members of the newly formed alliance are “deeply concerned and that plans outlined in a recent Government-backed report indicate that there could be many more.”

Members of the new group are the Campaign to Protect Rural England, ), Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales (CPRW), Campaign for National Parks (CNP) and National Association of Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (NAAONB).

They want the Government to introduce a so-called “smart network” of power lines, with more power being generated locally so that the electricity does not have to be supplied over many miles of open countryside.

They fear that new plans involve hundreds more pylons over the Snowdonia national park, several areas of outstanding local beauty, and green belt land scattered across the country, including Yorkshire.

The building of a line of pylons across the Vale of York in the 1990s caused one of the longest and most bitter planning disputes of the 20th Century.

Says CPRE president and former Yorkshire Dales resident Bill Bryson, the American author now living back in England: “The National Grid are planning to put up yet more overhead lines in these areas. This is crazy – more pylons do not equal progress.”