Strong interest in Ulverston Tourist Information Centre's future (From The Westmorland Gazette)

Strong interest in Ulverston Tourist Information Centre's future

12:38pm Tuesday 7th September 2010 in

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INTEREST in taking over Ulverston’s tourist information centre is mounting with several groups set to make their bids by the deadline of September 24.

South Lakeland District Council will stop running the facility, along with those in Windermere and Kendal, next spring due to mounting costs and dwindling performance.

It has received nine expressions of interest - three for Ulverston only - from ‘very diverse’ organisations and individuals.

At Monday’s town council meeting, The Gill resident Geoff Dellow said he had a group of 18 volunteers ready to keep the facility open if the council could raise its precept by 0.3 per cent to generate an extra £18,000, which would fund the Coronation Hall-based TIC.

Mr Dellow, who handed in a petition signed by 410 people supporting his plan, said: “Here is an ideal opportunity for the community to get involved. There is a feeling in the town that there is a job to be done.”

Mayor Phil Lister said the council could not review its precept until the end of March, the same time that South Lakeland District Council will cut ties with the TIC.

Janette Jenkinson added: “I know 410 people have signed the petition but we have an electorate - 9,234 who went out to vote at the last local election - and they need to be consulted. At a time when things are tight, to raise the precept by that much would need their verification.”

Town council quango Ulverston Community Partnership has expressed an interest to SLDC, but chairman Paul Jarvis told the meeting a stumbling block could be SLDC’s request that any bids include a plan to set up a viable business to support the TIC.

He said: “We would have to find a business that did not compete with any existing ones in town because we feel it would be unfair to take custom away from them.

"But it would be difficult to find one that made enough money to cover TIC costs that did not clash with other business interests.”

The council approved a proposal from Coun James Airey to back the UCP to look at future options and work on a contingency plan should no other bids be made.

Mr Airey warned: “Once the doors shut on the tourist information centre it is very, very difficult to get them open again.”

But one dissenting voice was Coun Colin Williams, who questioned whether the town even needed a TIC in the digital age.

On his blog after the meeting, he wrote: “The ‘now’ generation recognise that it's much easier to get information online, and as our councillors are a pretty out of touch bunch they were bound to side with the need for a physical TIC office.

"I don't know why Geoff Dellow wants a TIC, I think he is right about the website - that's the way to go. Let's concentrate on that. It would be much more cost effective.”

Coun Graham Vincent, SLDC’s economy and enterprise portfolio holder, told The Gazette that in the past ‘eight or nine years’ there had been a decline in services offered by the three TICs - which cost the council about £500,000 a year.

He said: “It has everything to do, I believe, with the amount of investment we have put in, because they haven’t changed and there is a different world out there now. We need a more sophisticated approach, but the district council cannot afford to do that.

"We are just a small district council and we weren’t able to do justice to the service. I really hope that whoever bids has a much more 21st century approach to it.”