A LEVENS-based holiday park company is offering accommodation to emergency service staff while it is unable to operate due to coronavirus.

Grant Gidman, a director at Leisure Resorts, said: “It’s just our way of showing support and appreciation really to the NHS.

“We are not after making profit from this at all. We are not after any publicity that’s going to benefit us as a business.We just want to be seen to be helping.”

The company is in the process of accepting NHS and Cumbria Constabulary staff into its Ullswater Heights holiday park near Penrith, which was only completed in July last year at a cost of £20m.

It is hoped Leisure Resorts’ smaller ‘Lakesway’ holiday park at Levens will also house emergency service staff.

Mr Gidman said: “We are in hospitality. Hospitality is, for all intents and purposes, closed for the foreseeable future. Why not offer our accommodation to those people who are travelling too far, who are working stupidly-long hours?

“I had an email from a nurse yesterday. She’s working 15-hour shifts. She’s having to travel an-hour-and-a-half home and have a couple of hours sleep.” He added furloughed workers at the holiday parks had kindly offered their services to help accommodate the emergency service staff.