THE North York Moors National Park's desire to maximise the potential use of redundant farm buildings as workspace is highly laudable. Providing places to work and start businesses is a good way to ensure the park communities retain some semblance of normality. Arguably the pressure on the park from commuters to Teesside, Scarborough and York who want to find a rural retreat there is as great as in the Yorkshire Dales.

That pressure is likely to be assisted by plenty of offers as the North Yorkshire property market continues to be bouyant and farmers, reeling from the effects of foot-and-mouth, seek to find ways to realise cash.

But the park's "economic test" it wants to apply to all applications for conversion to residential use must be applied sensibly. Almost every disused farm building would be capable of housing some form of business but would it be truly practical and would there be anyone out there willing to operate from it? We hope the policy, if finally enshrined in the planning blueprint for the park, will be handled sensitively and sensibly.

If implemented in a dogmatic way, the net result could be that many disused buildings would remain just that, incapable of modern farm use but blighted by a policy intent on imposing an inappropriate function upon them for which there is no apparent need.

Whilst tumble-down barns have a certain charm in the landscape, to have too many of them would not be to the benefit of anyone. The park needs to protect its landscape but it also needs people. People, be they affluent commuters or whoever, will nearly always be preferable to the wind whistling through decaying ruins.