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1. Summary
Responding to the need identified in the Lancashire
Tourism Strategy to raise awareness of sustainability
issues, the Green Lantern (Lancashire Tourism
Environmental Resources Network)
project started in April 1997. This review covers
its activities until the end of March 2002, i.e, its
first five years. The scheme closes on 31/03/04 when
the SRB funding comes to an end.
Using Single Regeneration Budget funding from the Lancashire
Tourism Partnership, the project has focussed on helping
Lancashire tourism businesses to adopt environmental
principles. Businesses have been offered tourism
industry specific workshops (attended by 118 businesses)
and individual environmental reviews (323 undertaken).
The reviews set targets that are then monitored.
Certificates of Achievement are awarded to businesses
making progress and participating businesses have the
opportunity to join their area’s Business Environment
Network.
A small grants scheme for environmental improvements
was introduced in Year 4 of the project (2000/01) and
136 Green Lantern operators are featured
on the www.lancashiregreentourism.com
web site.
2. Achievements
This partnership project is promoted under the Green
Lantern banner and is led by Lancashire County Council.
It is managed through a steering group of the partners,
whose leading members are Enterprise plc, Groundwork
Blackburn and the North West Tourist Board.
a. Workshops
In its first 5 years the project organised 10 half-day
workshops, attended by 118 tourism businesses (166 tourism
business people). The workshops covered topics
such as energy saving, waste management and recycling,
local agenda 21 activities and transportation.
Feedback forms indicated a good level of satisfaction
and many of those attending progressed to the next stage
of taking part in an individual environmental review.
 b.
Environmental Reviews
By the end of the Year 5 (2001/02) the project had
undertaken 323 half-day environmental reviews.
The reviews were carried out by environmental experts
from Enterprise plc (in the west of Lancashire) and
Groundwork Blackburn (in the east of Lancashire).
Participants received a written report and a certificate
containing a policy statement/action plan.
 c.
Monitoring Visits
After a period of 12 months the tourism businesses
were revisited to assess progress and receive additional
advice, if required. Eighty four percent of the
businesses which had received a monitoring visit had
implemented a substantial proportion of their action
plan and were awarded a Green Lantern Certificate of
Achievement.
d. Business and Environment Networks
To ensure the impetus is not lost after the monitoring
visits are completed all participants are given membership
of their local Business and Environment Networks, which
now fall within the networks coordinated by the Central
and West Lancashire Chamber of Commerce and Industry
in the west of the County and Groundwork Blackburn’s
Business and Environment Association in the east.
e. www.lancashiregreentourism.com Web Site
There is an emerging market for green tourism products.
To help promote the Green Lantern tourism businesses,
those that have received a monitoring visit have been
eligible for a free entry on this new web site, which
went live in October 2000.
One hundred and thirty six businesses have taken up
the offer and each one has a web page, which includes
a photograph and lists their environmental features
as well as the standard customer based information about
the establishments.
f. Small Grants Scheme
To help the participating businesses to take forward
their environmental review action plans a small grants
scheme was introduced in 2000/01.
A fund was established to facilitate the making of
grants of 33.33% of eligible costs, up to £500, towards
the installation of environmental improvement measures
eg double glazing, more efficient boilers, thermostatic
radiator valves, low energy light bulbs etc.
Thirty three projects have been assisted, £10,996.89
of grant aid bringing forward a total investment of
£42,859.53.
g. A Green Guide to Lancashire 1998
30,000 copies of this brochure were produced and distributed
nationally.
3. Funding
Encouraging tourism businesses to “go green” is resource
intensive. Tourism businesses tend to have a short term
focus to their activities and usually require evidence
of clear financial/business advantages if they are to
be persuaded to take part in a project.
Against this background and despite the clear financial
benefits from some aspects of environmental improvement
eg adopting energy saving practices, it has proved difficult
nationwide, to engage tourism businesses in green initiatives.
Therefore to make involvement in this project as attractive
as possible, all its benefits (eg workshops, environmental
reviews, web site entries) were made free.
As has been seen in the preceding sections this policy
has encouraged a great deal of participation and there
are now many more green tourism businesses in the County
than before the project started.
To achieve this the project utilised a 35.5% rate of
SRB grant over the 5 years, the non-SRB funding coming
from local authorities and in kind contributions from
the private sector and other partners.
4. Linkages with Other Schemes
Links have been made with the NWTB managed, LTP funded,
“Invest in the Best” project, which is aimed at helping
tourism businesses make improvements that lead to increases
in quality.
The Green Lantern project provides environmental reviews
where the IiB applicant is seeking funding for environmental
work.
The Green Lantern web site is to be linked into the
www.lancashiretourism.com
site, which has been developed as part of the “Raising
the Profile” and “Bookability” LTP funded projects.
5. Conclusion
Creating environmental benefits is one of the four
main themes of the LTP scheme and one of the Strategic
Objectives of the SRB is concerned with environmental
matters. This project has dealt directly with
environmental issues for Lancashire’s tourism business
community.
Clearly not only has it raised the environmental awareness
of over 300 tourism businesses in the County it has,
furthermore, seen over 4 out of 5 of those businesses
make environmental improvements.
The SRB funding has allowed the project to benefit
a broad range of tourism businesses, not just the large
businesses or those in rural areas. It has also
proved to have a good reach, not only dealing with those
businesses that were already green or thinking about
going green.
6. Background
The LTP is a partnership of public, private and voluntary
sector organisations and businesses established to attract
funding and help develop tourism in the County.
It was awarded £7.5 million of Government SRB funding
to facilitate a variety of tourism development, marketing
and training initiatives over 7 years, from April 1997. The
Green Lantern project was 1 of 50 LTP projects using
SRB funding.
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