Peak District businesses suffer significantly as tier system impacts surrounding regions
23 October 2020, 17:54
Businesses in the Peak District National Park are suffering because of the Government's tier system, a member of its tourist board has told LBC.
Lindsey Ray, the Deputy Director for Marketing at the Peak District and Derbyshire, explained to LBC's Shelagh Fogarty that Peak District businesses are now "taking cancellation after cancellation after cancellation".
She made her remarks as tougher coronavirus rules have today come into force for millions of people in England and Wales.
Mrs Ray told Shelagh: "At the moment, we are looking at cancellations coming in. If you'd have asked me a few weeks ago, businesses seemed sort of quietly confident. They'd had a couple of really good months following the easing of restrictions and of coming out of lockdown.
"But with [the Government] introducing first the 'rule of six' and then the tier system, we are getting an awful lot of feedback from our businesses that they're just taking cancellation after cancellation after cancellation."
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She added: "Although there [are] great parts of our area that [are] in Tier 1, we rely on a huge amount of our visitors from Tier 2 and Tier 3 areas."
Later in the exchange, she also said: "The reason that we were the first National Park was because we were surrounded by so many big cities [whose residents] used to come into the Peak District and still do.
"It's their back garden, if you like. And they are the increasing places that are in Tier 3. So we very much rely on visitors from those areas and suddenly they are in Tier 3 at the moment.
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"And our advice [is] against travelling. So whilst most of us are in Tier 1 in the area, without the visitors the businesses are really quiet."
Mrs Ray also noted that Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier areas all fall within the Peak District at present.
She said: "We're back to sort of where we were in March with the guidelines changing. It seems to be on a daily basis as well. So trying to stay ahead of it all and keep the businesses all going is quite a challenge."
