Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Aims for Tourism Boost with New Visitor Partnership
Mayor Paul Bristow says LVEP status will create jobs, tackle youth unemployment and bring the region’s attractions together under one plan
Cambridgeshire and Peterborough has been given Local Visitor Economy Partnership (LVEP) status by VisitEngland, in a bid to grow tourism and support thousands of local jobs.
The new status brings together councils, businesses, and cultural groups to create a joined-up approach for promoting the region’s visitor economy—which already supports forty thousand jobs and brings in two billion pounds a year.
Mayor Paul Bristow says the partnership marks a big step forward:
“What it does, it brings together all the tourist offers and everything that contributes to the tourist economy across our region into one place."
"There’s one central plan and one central strategy for promoting our region.”
He believes the LVEP could also make a real difference for young people looking for work:
“We have an issue of youth unemployment in this country. Too many people are not in education, training, or employment."
"This initiative will bring lots of new jobs, hopefully for the tourism sector.”
The Mayor added, “We’ve got everything going on in one place, one clear strategy, so when people go to visit somewhere in Cambridge, they can just take the short trip up to Ely to visit that magnificent cathedral. Similarly, the same for Peterborough.”
Mayor Bristow says the new status should help unlock more funding from government, which will help promote the region’s attractions and bring more money into the local economy:
“Hopefully it will mean more jobs. Hopefully it’ll mean more funding from central government because you have to have an LVEP to access some of that funding, which will enable us to properly promote some of these initiatives, and hopefully it’ll be more money coming into our economy.”