by Joe Jeffrey
Action required in Cumbria as flooding expected to impact local tourism
Britain’s secretary of state for tourism has been urged to pay more attention to Northern England’s waterways in an attempt to halt the decline in tourism following recent devastation caused by floods.
The warning was delivered in January by Lancashire and Cumbria parks operator Henry Wild at a major London tourism conference at which cabinet minister John Whittingdale was among MPs present.
Both Whittingdale and Wild addressed delegates at the annual conference of the British Holiday & Home Parks Association of which Wild is the UK national chairman.
Held at the QEII Conference Centre in Westminster, the event drew representatives from many of Britain’s 3,000-plus park businesses, as well as cross-party politicians and UK tourism chiefs.
Wild, whose family business owns Skelwith Fold Caravan Park in Ambleside and Moss Wood Caravan Park near Lancaster, said that the government needed urgently to address the problem of ill-maintained inland waterways.
He went on to say there needed to be a body appointed with clearly defined responsibilities for ensuring waterways were capable of removing surface water from the land.
The Environment Agency, suggested Wild, was clearly not up to the job and needed to be given new powers and funding to act on behalf of communities and businesses at risk.
MP Whittingdale, whose portfolio as secretary of state for culture, media and sport includes responsibilities for tourism, undertook to represent the concerns he had heard to government heads.
He also announced at the conference that prime minister David Cameron was set to visit Cumbria to unveil a £3 million fund to speed up flood repairs and promote the county to visitors.
Recent events in Cumbria and Lancashire had shown the potentially devastating impact that flooding could have on the tourism industry.
In the immediate aftermath of December’s deluges many of Cumbria’s 100-plus caravan and camping parks had reported a fall-off in bookings for 2016.
The above said, Wild suggested the threat to Cumbria’s £2.4 billion tourism industry – which included his own park’s 450 caravan and holiday home pitches – now seemed to be receding.
“It appears that many holidaymakers have been heeding the message that the county is determined to be back on its feet by spring with repairs made to much of our damaged infrastructure,” he commented.
“But we still need to get the message out to anyone hesitating that it’s going to be business as usual as far as our visitor attractions and other tourism providers are concerned.”
Wild went on to say that, like many other UK regions, Cumbria’s and rural Lancashire’s economies were highly dependent on visitors who, in Cumbria alone, sustain around 34,000 full-time equivalent jobs
Despite the estimated high cost of the floods, said Wild, the real tragedy would be if any efforts or expense were spared to try and prevent a recurrence.
“We tend to be a resilient lot here in the north, as made evident by the way in which our communities came together during and after the floods to help each other.
“We now need a clear road map which identifies the agency and the resources available to it for tackling the problem of an ever-rising water table.”
