A council in dire financial straits is preparing to spend £50,000 fighting the proposed South Downs national park.

East Sussex County Council's ruling Cabinet is being advised to object to the plan and earmark the cash for lawyers and specialist witnesses at a public inquiry.

The council, facing a £30 million cash shortfall, had already signalled its intention to force a hearing into the plan.

National park campaigners branded the move "barmy" and said the council was rejecting public opinion and turning its back on millions of pounds of conservation funds.

Paul Millmore, of the South Downs Campaign, said: "To spend public money to turn away Government money is crass stupidity."

Brighton and Hove City Council leader Ken Bodfish said: "The park is clearly something people in the area want. To waste £50,000 fighting something everybody in the area wants is just barmy."

But County council leader Peter Jones said people had a right to hear the Government make a better case for the park.

He said: "There are important issues at stake here and it is important that we have this properly examined in public.

"The people who have been behind this national park see it more as a plaything for urban man rather than an environment where tens of thousands of people are trying to make a living and bring up their families."

The designation order, agreed by the Countryside Agency last month, was published yesterday, for last-minute comments and objections.

Environment Secretary Margaret Beckett will call a public inquiry, expected to start in the autumn, if any council objects.

The county council, in common with the majority of other local authorities, objects in principle to the park and hopes to share the cost of fighting an inquiry.

The council has complained land at Portobello, at Telscombe Cliffs, the University of Sussex campus and part of Village Way North, site of the proposed Albion stadium at Falmer, is not included in the planned park's boundaries.

Elsewhere, environmentalists have complained many areas on the fringes of Brighton and Hove have been excluded.

John Prescott announced he would create a national park in the South Downs as a millennium gift for the nation in 1999.

The expected public inquiry should begin in the autumn and it is likely to be at least 2006 before the park is operating.