As well as building on a strong visitor economy, we need to enable a diverse range of employment opportunities, capitalising on Cumbria’s attractiveness as a place to live and work. Our communities are ageing and this will present pressure on rural services and the sustainability of our settlements. Across Cumbria there is an urgent need to attract and retain young people to visit, live and work. However, in some communities in the Lake District over half the housing stock is being used as second or holiday homes meaning many young people and working families cannot afford to buy open market homes.
What we want to achieve is set out in the Partnership Plan here:
Poole Bank Farm was considered to be in one of the ‘hard to reach’ areas of Cumbria in terms of online connectivity. After making the decision to diversify into luxury camping pods, Pip Simpson and his partner Hannah Towers knew that the broadband service they had would struggle to meet the connectivity requirements which have become an expectation in today’s world.
‘With no known plans for improvements in our area, our community approached the commercial market for the delivery of a network to provide an improved service. Supported by the Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme and Digital Borderlands Top-Up Vouchers, our selected supplier worked up a scheme which was successfully delivered.
Many businesses, particularly in the tourism industry, will agree that the provision of Wi-Fi services to customers has become an expectation. We can now offer this. We have also been able to create and manage our website, run our social media page and handle the online enquiries we receive.
The improved service has also benefitted our farming business; we can now work BACs [payments] with confidence, notify BCMS (British Cattle Movement Service) of cattle movements and register new stock using an online cattle passport system, and carry out a host of other administrative functions.
At home, our service supports a range of activities including online learning, gaming and entertainment.
The benefits of our improved service are huge; it has made such a difference to our lives.’
Source: Connecting Cumbria
Infographic: 2023 saw 27,745 dwellings with broadband in the National Park, 3.1% with decent broadband; 83.6% with Superfast broadband and 10% which already have gigabit connectivity. £645K of Digital Borderlands or Cumbria County Council top-up funding was paid or allocated in that year.
Infographic: 2024 saw 8,291 premises with broadband in the National Park, 2.6% with decent broadband; 86% with Superfast broadband and 29.7% which already have gigabit connectivity. £928K of Digital Borderlands or Cumbria County Council top-up funding was paid or allocated.
In 2022 the Partnership acknowledged that 4G mobile phone coverage was an essential resource for residents and visitors alike and therefore agreed to add a new action to the Plan to ensure that improvements in coverage are delivered.
The new action states: ‘Monitor 4G coverage in the National Park as the Shared Rural Network delivers and assess whether further intervention is required so that no-one and no place is left behind.’
Infographic: 47.8% of the Lake District National Park has 4G Coverage
The figure above represents outdoor 4G coverage from all four mobile network operators (EE, O2, Vodafone, Three) and has remained essentially the same since last year’s annual report.
Source: Connecting Cumbria using OFCOM data, January 2024
Led by a partnership between the National Trust, the Lake District National Park Authority, Westmorland and Furness Council and housing developer Urban Splash, Windermere Gateway's long-term vision is to unlock opportunities for a mix of new, much-needed homes, jobs, sustainable transport connections and a world-class welcome for residents and visitors alike.
Part of the programme is a housing-allocation site at Orrest Head Farm and the first stage to unlocking that development will be improving accessibility, including upgrades to the A591, Thwaites Lane and new pedestrian and cycle links between the site and Windermere railway station. Funding to support the delivery of these works is being sought through Homes England's Brownfield Infrastructure and Land fund but is still subject to a formal grant funding agreement.
Urban Splash has now submitted a highways and access planning application to the Lake District National Park Authority. The highways and access application - which will facilitate the development of land for housing - includes measure to improve junction visibility as well as safety measures, such as surface material changes, to better highlight the presence of the junction and encourage drivers to reduce speed and give pedestrians and cyclists priority.
Windermere Gateway is a long-term vision, which will deliver a number of projects over multiple years. It is not just about immediate changes but more importantly about building a prosperous and sustainable future for Windermere and its community, both for now and for generations to come.
The first stage in realising the Windermere Gateway is to progress the highways and access infrastructure, which will support the future delivery of local and affordable needs homes, and a National Trust Lake District office, on the Orrest Head farm site.
For the next phase, developers Urban Splash and landowners National Trust will focus on progressing their designs for the housing and employment elements of the development. An outline planning application for the housing and employment proposals is anticipated towards the end of 2024.
As the project moves forward, there will be more opportunities for the community to be involved in shaping the proposals as they develop with a long-term engagement plan being developed by the project partners.
Furnished holiday homes still qualify for small business rate exemption – this has not been removed.
The new business rates relief scheme for retail, hospitality and leisure properties in 2023-24 was announced by The Chancellor in the 2022 Autumn statement. The 2023-24 Retail, Hospitality and Leisure Business Rates Relief scheme will provide eligible, occupied, retail, hospitality (including self-catering accommodation) and leisure properties with a 75% relief, with a cash cap limit of £110,000 per business.
The 2024 Spring Budget announced that the government will abolish the Furnished Holiday Lettings tax regime from 6 April 2025, meaning short-term and long-term lets will be treated in the same way for tax purposes. This will eliminate the tax advantage for landlords who let short-term furnished holiday properties over those who let residential properties to longer-term tenants. This will take effect on 6 April 2025 and draft legislation will be published in due course.
The most up-to-date and accurate data we hold about the number of second homes by Parish for the whole National Park is the written evidence that the Lake District National Park Authority (LDNPA) submitted to Government in 2022. This set out the percentage of second homes by parish, with some having a particularly high percentage; this is illustrated below.
Map: showing the percentage of properties not used for permanent residential use per parish in 2022
We also have some supporting data about holiday homes and second homes from the 2021 Census. However, this data is not collated to reflect the park boundary so is based on a ‘best fit’ approach.
The LDNPA is actively sourcing up-to-date information about the number of second homes and holiday lets across the Lake District to prepare for the planning use changes and holiday lets registration scheme recently announced by Government.
We have not been able to source exact figures about the number of mortgage lenders who are flexible on lending where there are local occupancy controls. However, Halifax, Nationwide, TSB, Skipton and Leeds building societies and banks will consider lending on properties with local occupancy conditions.
The main lenders who will not consider lending on local occupancy properties are NatWest, HSBC, Santander, Accord, Coventry, Virgin, Barclays and most of the smaller building societies.
Local occupancy restrictions can differ from place to place. For instance, if a ‘local occupant’ in defined as someone that comes from a specified and very small number of villages then mortgage lenders might be more reluctant to lend, and therefore less flexible in their approach, as the pool of potential occupants would be much smaller.
Graph: showing the speed of economic recovery since Covid-19
Mindful of the very significant impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the economic value of tourism in the Lake District, the Partnership set itself ‘speed of recovery’ targets that it felt were realistic in terms of improvements after the very significant economic dip in 2020. These are shown on the graph above as slow, medium and fast trajectories. Happily, the economic recovery surpassed our ‘fast’ target in 2022 and we hope that this upward trend continues when the next data becomes available from Summer 2024.
Source: Cumbria Tourism STEAM (Scarborough Tourism Economic Activity Monitor) survey data, published 2022
