SOME of North Yorkshire's finest views are to become even more picturesque, as work begins to bury unsightly electricity lines underground.

Three areas of the North York Moors National Park have been selected for the burial scheme, with a further four lined up if funding allows.

NEDL, the company responsible for maintaining the power network in our region, received a £5.5 million grant from electricity regulator Ofgem last year to carry out undergrounding work in seven protected areas.

Approximately £1 million of that grant will be spent in the North York Moors.

After consulting with the park authority, power lines in Gillamoor, Hutton Buscel and Faceby will be buried underground, rather than replaced with new overhanging lines.

Stephen Keeney, a customer liaison manager at NEDL, said he hoped work could begin at the sites this year and completed within five years.

"The park authority has been very co-operative with us, they've supplied us with seven schemes they wish us to pursue as their priority," he said.

"We're not arbiters of good taste or good views, we just maintain the network, so we consulted with the authority."

He said Egton village, Egton Bridge, Appleton-le-Moors and Swainby had also been put forward in a second swathe of replacements.

Last year, The Press reported how NEDL was upgrading the network on the North York Moors. Most of the national park's aging electricity network is served by bare copper wires, strung at the top of timber poles.

By modern standards they are unsafe, and can cause severe electric shocks if accidentally touched with fishing rods or gardening equipment.

New safer sheathed wires are now being rolled out - but these are also substantially thicker and, therefore, even more noticeable.

Mr Keeney said it was financially impossible to replace all 3,700km of cable managed by NEDL in national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty. "Five-and-a-half million pounds sounds an awful lot of money, but it is only enough money to do one per cent of our overhead lines," he said.

The scheme would cost NEDL a substantial sum, as the Ofgem grant only allowed £65 to be spent for every metre of underground cable, with the true cost nearer £250 per metre.

"Underground schemes are massively expensive because you have to use thicker cables and there are the costs of actually digging up the earth," he said.

"It's going to cost us an awful lot of money, but we've committed to it."

Caroline Skelly, planning policy officer at the North York Moors National Park Authority, said: "We welcome this. The lines have an adverse impact on the characters of the conservation areas."