SOUTH Lakeland businesses are to be urged to support a cross party campaign to save the pound.

Business for Sterling, a national group formed two years ago to press the business case for retaining the pound, wants to set up a branch in the area.

The organisation staged its first meeting in Cumbria, at Kendal's Castle Green Hotel this week, to lobby an invited audience of local business people.

Regional press officer David Tattersall said there were sound economic, political, structural and business reasons why Britain should not to join the euro.

With a national referendum expected within two years if Labour wins the next general election, Mr Tattersall said Business for Sterling wanted to raise the public profile of the 'no' campaign.

So far one of the few high profile local business people to publicly nail their colours to the anti-euro mast is Eileen Ainscough, managing director of the Windermere Marina, who has joined Business for Sterling.

But Mr Tattersall is convinced other business supporters will come forward as the campaign gains momentum.

Surveys showed most small and medium-sized businesses opposed scrapping the pound, with only the large multi-national companies - represented by the CBI - favouring joining the euro, he said.

Westmorland and Lonsdale Conservative MP Tim Collins, who attended the Business for Sterling meeting, said businesses which did not trade with Europe mistakenly believed they would be unaffected by a single currency.

Yet the cost of signing up to the euro would be huge, affecting everything from firms' payroll systems to new cash machines, added the MP.

He took to the road this week, campaigning across South Lakeland on the back of a Save the Pound lorry.

Mr Collins said he hoped a South Lakeland branch of Business for Sterling would get off the ground: "I think there are a number of companies locally, including some pretty well-known ones, which would be happy to be involved with it."