Local Help and Resources
Resource efficiency is the first step to improving your sustainability - others include working with other local business partners, using local foods, promoting local culture, local transport and sensitive local environment use and preservation: developing all of these aspects will be good for your business. It balances the long-term needs of your tourism business and visitors with the local community, in ways which not only have minimal impact on the environment but promote economic and social sustainability.
Sustainable tourism is in fact about much more than this. You will achieve a more profitable and efficient business by developing this wider view of the sustainability of your tourism business. It is also about business planning, quality of your product, the skills of your staff, improving visitor experience, events, local "sense of place" etc. support organisations
Rural Planning Solutions
Planning, Feasibility and Market Research for Rural Development
Rural Planning Solutions is a specialist planning service for rural people, property and places. We believe passionately that rural areas are a fantastic place to live, work and visit. Our objective is to enable development which adds value to rural property and communities.
At Rural Planning Solutions we can provide all the professional advice and input necessary to take a development idea from concept to completion.
We are experts in the development of:
• Rural Housing
• Rural Workspace
• Farm Diversification
• Rural Leisure and tourism facilities
• Renewable Energy schemes
• Farm buildings and waste systems
• Housing on the Farm
• Sustainable Rural Communities
• Rural Estates
Our expertise is based on over 50 years collective experience of rural development. Based in north Lancashire we have a wide network of contacts across the North and a strong track record of adding value to rural property and places.
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Cumbria Business Environment Network (CBEN)
CBEN is a local accreditation scheme, which has two different awards aimed at all variations of business.
The Green at Heart Scheme uses a points scoring system with points available in 72 different categories. The scheme gives all businesses regardless of size the opportunity to reduce their carbon footprint and receive recognition for their efforts. A business can be awarded a Bronze, Silver and Gold awards dependent on their point's total/carbon footprint reduction.
The Environmental Management System Scheme offers businesses the opportunity to reduce their carbon footprint by closely following an International Environmental Standard e.g. ISO 14001. The scheme will not only reduce a business's costs and Carbon Footprint, but it may also provide a springboard to achieve an international standard. visit website
Cumbria Green Business Forum
Get smart, stay solvent - Go green
Tourism businesses are facing unprecedented pressures - volatile energy prices, rising waste costs, tighter environmental regulations and growing consumer demands for greener products and services.
Cumbria Green Business Forum (CGBF) is an independent business-to-business network set up to help local companies rise to this challenge. Within our network we have the skills, expertise and practical experience to help your business reduce environmental impacts, improve performance and stay solvent.
CGBF membership costs just £30 a year. Join today and enjoy the benefits:
- Environmental seminars and workshops - free to members
- A comprehensive website and members forum - packed with useful advice and contacts to help ‘green up' your business
- Introduction to CBEN environmental management services
- Access to a wide range of environment-friendly suppliers
Nurture Lakeland
Who they are?
Nurture Lakeland is a grass roots Cumbrian conservation trust and membership organisation working with tourism businesses and visitors to raise money for environmental improvements and conservation work across the county.
Their aim is to encourage and promote environmentally aware and sustainable practices in business and to enable companies to put something back into their local landscapes, communities and environment.
Since 1993 Nurture Lakeland has raised almost £1.5 million for conservation work in the Lake District and Cumbria.
What they do?
Nurture Lakeland brings conservation and tourism together. They encourage and support the sponsorship of conservation and environmental works by local tourism operators. By joining them and sponsoring a conservation project tourism businesses are showing customers that we all care about the environment.
They work one to one with their members to identify conservation projects for your support. Once a business has chosen its project to support, they work closely with all parties to set up a fundraising package enabling you and your customers to raise money for your project.
You can choose to sponsor a project from one of four themes; Wildlife and Wilderness, Culture and Communities, Access, or the Climate Contribution Fund.
The Climate Contribution Fund is about encouraging both businesses and customers to do something positive about climate change. It is becoming ever more apparent that the world's population is living beyond its means and that we are using our natural resources at an unsustainable rate. Monies from the Climate Contribution Fund are supporting projects such as safe cycle ways, woodland planting and maintenance and the management of peat moorlands.
Most of our visitors to Cumbria will be coming for the breathtaking mountains and Lakeland scenery. The Access fund ensures that vital path repair work and provision of well maintained access allows everyone to enjoy the beautiful surroundings.
The wildlife of Cumbria and the Lake District is wonderfully diverse, with many rare native British species making a home here, including Red Squirrels, Ospreys, Water Voles and the Natterjack Toad, to name just a few. The marvellous variety of our countryside is what makes our county so special, and our Wildlife and Wilderness projects protect and manage the landscape in which many unique and sometimes threatened creatures live.
The Culture and Communities project support local people and places ensuring that traditional crafts like hedge laying and stone walling are not lost, and that local children are able to learn about, value and enjoy their local environment.
How we raise money for Conservation
Nurture Lakeland encourage all of their members to raise funds for conservation work in Cumbria. There are a number of simple ways that you can do this.
Visitor Payback
This is Nurture Lakelands most popular fundraising option. Over 80% of their businesses raise money in this way. The beauty of ‘visitor payback' is its simplicity. It is an innovative, easy fundraising scheme with very little administration.
How does it work?
You add a voluntary donation of £1 or £2 to the end of your customer's bill. Twice a year Nurture Lakeland will get in touch with you and ask you to tally up the amounts and pass the funds on to them. Our experience shows that less than 1% of customers decline to participate, in fact most are willing to give more.
The 1% for the planet
As a retailer an easy way to show you care about the planet is to invite customers to make a donation of 1% of the value of their bill. This is shown at the point of sale and is added on after VAT or any other charges. This is a simple and easy point of sale scheme.
Why join Nurture Lakeland?
Join them today and become part of a growing community of businesses that are showing that they care about the environment and their impact upon it.
Benefits
- Improve your image
- Attract new customers
- Add value to your customer's experiences; by choosing your business, your customers will know that they are helping to protect the environment
- Gain access to environmental consultancy services
- Join a network of hundreds of environmentally conscious businesses
- Benefit from the extra promotion that your support for conservation brings
- Entry in their online search facility, designed to allow customers to seek out environmentally friendly businesses.
- Free 50 word advert on their website, including reciprocal website links (their web based database is frequently used by to gather information for other sites and publications)
- Listing in all of their Green Guide publications
- Join an organization with an internationally unique reputation
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Nurture Lakeland have launched a new website page called Cumbria Green Grants. It acts as one-stop shop for businesses researching available grants, loans and incentives when wanting to improve the sustainability of their own business.
Friends of the Lake District - Connecting People and Place for 75 years
Friends of the Lake District are a membership charity celebrating its 75th anniversary in 2009. We are the only organisation dedicated solely to looking after and enhancing the beautiful landscapes of Cumbria.
We want Cumbria to remain beautiful and our work focuses on this. In turn this helps the visitor economy, as the beauty of the landscape, a chance to enjoy peace and tranquillity are key reasons to visit. We have actively invested in the landscape too - we own land ourselves that we welcome people onto and through our environmental improvement grant scheme we have helped communities improve their local area through supporting the restoration of heritage features, creating wildlife areas and the production of local information guides.
How could we work together with you?
- We could provide information about our work and what we are doing for the future of Cumbria's landscapes. You can visit our website at www.fld.org.uk for further information.
- Our Flora of the Fells project, supported by Natural England and the Lake District National Park Sustainable Development Fund, has a range of guides and publications about the special nature of Cumbria's flowers, tarns and landscapes. Flora of the Fells also runs festivals and education projects to help people connect with the landscape. These provide opportunities for your customers for great days out in sustainable ways. We are working with the Tourism and Conservation Partnership to raise funds for more Flora festival and education projects through their membership - contact them at www.ourstolookafter.co.uk or 015394 34630
- We work with the Lake District National Park Authority on the Give the Driver a Break project which produces a series of leaflets on days out in the National Park by rambler buses with discounts from local businesses for bus users. You could increase your profile as a sustainable tourism business by promoting Give the Driver a Break and offering discounts to bus users.
- Friends of the Lake District are a supporter of the Fix the Fells upland path restoration project and you can promote both enjoying the fells as well the need to raise funds to keep paths in good repair.
- You could become a Member of Friends of the Lake District and so receive our twice yearly magazine Conserving Lakeland to keep up to date with our work as well as find out more about the history, heritage and conservation of the Lake District and Cumbria.
We are interested in developing out links with tourism businesses and if you have an idea and would like to talk to us please call Friends of the Lake District on 01539 720788 or visit their website.
NetRegs - environmental guidance for your business
NetRegs provides free environmental guidance for small and medium-sized businesses in the UK. It will help you to understand what you need to do to comply with environmental law and protect the environment. It could even help you to save money by showing you ways to use your resources more efficiently. (You can search for guidance for your business type, see Hospitality, leisure and tourism)
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Environmental legislation updates
Get the latest on environmental laws affecting your business and what you need to do to comply. You can subscribe to NetRegs Update, a completely free, monthly email newsletter.
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Funding
Buy new equipment and cut running costs, at no expense to yourself!
Eligibility for the Carbon Trust's interest-free Energy Efficiency loans has just grown to allow even more small to medium-sized businesses to buy energy efficient equipment. Loans are available for between £3,000 and £100,000 - and are designed to pay for themselves through energy savings. If you're looking to buy new equipment and cut running costs, at no expense to yourself, you can find more about the loan scheme by calling 0800 085 2005 or visiting www.carbontrust.co.uk/loans
Sustainable Travel
In the past, Cumbria Tourism commissioned an independent review of its carbon footprint to identify the areas where its day-to-day operations were most harmful to the environment and the subsequent measures that could be introduced to reduce this impact. This is now influencing the way in which staff travel to and from work, and to and from meetings - through car-sharing and the introduction of cycle to work schemes where staff have been actively encouraged to purchase bicycles through the organisation, thereby cutting down on car use and promoting health and wellbeing at the same time.
This attitude is also reflected within the membership. Cumbria Tourism encourages members to car-share whenever possible; such as when attending quarterly Commercial Members meetings or when attending courses and organised events. With attendees' permission, lists of member contact details are posted on our extranet to enable members to organise the sharing of transport in advance.
We need to make sure that people are able to both get to, and around, the county easily therefore we are currently involved in a number of countywide initiatives to improve the quality of the area's sustainable transport framework. One of these, the Lake District Transport Strategy involves CT engaging with key strategic partners to reduce the impact of traffic in the National Park and to provide a range of viable alternatives to using the private car.
There are also various new initiatives in a planning stage looking at new cycle and walking routes to increase the number of visitors cycling and walking in the area.
However, there are already many enjoyable alternative options to using the car in Cumbria - from the open topped 555's that run between Lancaster, Keswick and Carlisle offering birds-eye views of the lakes, valleys, surrounding villages and up to the fells; to the thousands of miles of footpaths, cycleways and bridleways that let visitors appreciate the exhilaration that comes from being out in the fresh country air. Currently, the vast majority of the 15.3 million visitors that come here year after year arrive by car, but we need to try to encourage them to give the car a break whilst they are here by providing information on alternative options.
This not only helps to look after our environment for the benefit of future generations of visitors, but it also supports both the public transport and independent transport operators. One such example is the ‘Give the Driver a Break' scheme - bus services for Borrowdale, Kentmere, Langdale and Ullswater, which also offer suggestions of places for people to visit en route.
Windermere, Ullswater, Coniston and Derwentwater all have boats that take you to different ports around the lakes, which offer visitors a much more attractive option of getting around these areas. If you're an accommodation provider based within these areas, make sure your visitors know how to get the most out of these attractions and perhaps even consider partnering up with them to offer discounts for your guests.
The railway network along the West Cumbrian coast is one of the most picturesque in the country as is the historic Settle to Carlisle line, where you can join up with the coastal service in the capital for a complete Cumbria round trip! The shorter Lakes Line, which operates between the mainline station at Oxenholme to Windermere has a number of suggestions for scenic walks from each stop and has also introduced a Real Ale Trail, which points out the best places along the line to savour a pint of real local ale.
Further information on getting around Cumbria
The Consider Travel leaflet gives more helpful tips and information. download leaftet
Fresh Air is Free' Campaign
The campaign which is delivered by the award winning sustainable tourism charity, Nurture Lakeland, is engaging local guest accommodation businesses and helping them produce bespoke mini-guides for their visitors so that they can enjoy a car free holiday. Not only does using your car less during a visit to the Lake District mean that the environment gets a little help from its friends but it can enhance your stay but allowing you to see alternative sights and explore what's on your doorstep. More information on the campaign can be found on www.freshairisfree.org.uk
Your local recycling collectors
From books to furniture to plastics, view a complete list of collectors in your area. For information on local authority services that may be available to you, please contact your local district or borough council direct.
