A senior figure at Bannau Brycheiniog wants to see the new Welsh Government review how it funds all National Park Authorities (NPAs) in Wales.

For several years, Bannau Brycheiniog NPA has been focussing on addressing the recommendations in the critical “Delivery of Change” report by Audit Wales (AW) from 2021.

The report has been highlighted in recent weeks by former board member Christopher Coppock, who made public a highly critical letter on the appointment of NPA chief executive Catherine Mealing-Jones to the role of Auditor General for Wales.

He pointed out that Bannau Brycheiniog is “in a worse position financially at the end of her tenure than when she arrived.”

Mr Coppock’s letter was also a response to news that Bannau Brycheiniog has set a budget for this year which relies on just under £700,000 from reserves to balance the books.

At their meeting in March, Bannau Brycheiniog finance chiefs warned that the authority could not keep using its reserves to finance its services, as they could be exhausted by 2029 – which would see the NPA effectively go bust.

The AW report, which was published in February 2021, recommended that the NPA needed to “drive forward the change programme, strengthen governance and decision making.”

And this has now been done.

Back in December, the NPA’s audit committee received a letter from AW which confirmed the work to address the 2021 report had come to an end and that the emphasis will shift to the finances.

Audit Wales director Gareth Lucy said: “The position has changed since 2021 and we consider the most significant risks to the authority’s good governance to be the need to address its financial position, and linked to this, its capacity issues.

“At this stage we do not think it is necessary or helpful to revisit the specific actions taken in response to the statutory recommendations of 2021 and recognise that the authority has completed the actions it intended to undertake in response.

“We therefore now consider these specific statutory recommendations to be concluded.”

Bannau Brycheiniog NPA chairman Gareth Ratcliffe is a Powys county councillor elected to represent the world-renowned town of Hay-on-Wye.

He is one of six Powys councillors on the board of 18, as most of the national park is in the county.

Other board members also include one councillor each from Blaenau Gwent, Carmarthenshire, Merthyr Tydfil, Monmouthshire, Rhondda Cynon Taf and Torfaen, which all have parts of their council areas within Bannau Brycheiniog.

The other six are independent lay members appointed by the Welsh Government.

Cllr Ratcliffe said: “We’re in a difficult financial position but we’re making decisions early, we’re moving forward and AW have given us a clean bill of health on our governance.

“You can only do one thing at a time, you have to prioritise and we’re doing that.

“We’re in this financial position because of the way we are funded.

“We only have our core grant from the Welsh Government.”

He explained that this had been the way the authority had been financed for several years and was a reason why the budget had been set “a bit over” for this year.

Cllr Ratcliffe continued: “Grants to fund this or that project come later in the (financial) year.

“We’ll be bankrupt in three years unless things change.”

He added that since 2010 the authority had seen a 53 per cent cut in real-terms funding.

Cllr Ratcliffe said: “It’s an archaic system, which is why I want a review of national park funding so that we can be stronger.”

He added that Bannau Brycheiniog, as well as the other Welsh NPAs of Eryri (Snowdonia) in north west Wales and Pembrokeshire Coast in the south west, were making the case together to the Welsh Government for a better funding model.

This is even more important with the possibility of a new national park being set up in north east Wales.

Cllr Ratcliffe added: “It’s all well and good to have a fourth national park but they need to actually sort out how the present ones are funded first of all.”

Audit Wales said: “We have made recommendations on how the authority can improve arrangements to secure its financial sustainability in our report published in September 2025.

“This report recommended that the authority should urgently put in place medium-term financial planning arrangements to determine and set out how it will address its anticipated budget gap.

“This should include considering the impact of different options on its well-being objectives and statutory duties; and arrangements for regular oversight and scrutiny of financial plans, and progress in implementing them to address the authority’s anticipated budget gap.”