One year to go: a Blueprint for Cumbria’s first Mayor

The people of Cumbria will elect a mayor for the first time on 6 May 2027 to head up the newly formed Cumbria Mayoral Combined Authority. Over the next year, Friends of the Lake District will be quizzing all of the candidates on their views about environmental and community issues in Cumbria and pressing them to recognise the importance of the county’s landscape for communities, businesses and the health and wellbeing of residents.

From 2027, mayoral elections will take place using the Supplementary Vote system where voters have the opportunity to rank their first and second choices for mayor. This means that the votes of more people count towards the result and candidates secure office with broader backing from their community.
Why is it important for Friends of the Lake District to engage with the mayoral election candidates?

The mayor will have powers and money to influence things that have an impact on Cumbria’s landscapes including the environment, climate change action, transport, housing, health, communities and the preparation of a Spatial Development Strategy for the county. The mayor will also have the power to raise a visitor levy on holiday accommodation across part or all of Cumbria – funds that should be used to mitigate the impacts of tourism on the county.

We want to determine each prospective mayor’s position on issues that will have an impact on the landscapes, environment and communities of Cumbria. This is so that we can put together a picture of which mayoral candidates, if elected, would deliver the best outcomes for the county’s landscape. It will also help Cumbrians to be confident in what they will be voting for.

A transformational approach to public transport

We will ask candidates to:

• Commit to improving public transport for both residents and visitors, reducing car traffic, increasing active travel and better business transport logistics.
• Set out how they will secure additional long-term sustainable funding to deliver improved transport across the county.

Housing that prioritises local people, not visitors

We will ask candidates to prioritise housing for local people, specifically by:

• Supporting our “Fairer Housing, Stronger Communities” campaign which aims to strengthen restrictions on the number of holiday lets and second homes in the Lake District.
• Ensuring that new-build housing is appropriately located and responds to genuine local needs on size, type, affordability and tenure – including properly evidenced targets and greater use of local and principal occupancy clauses.
• Enabling more efficient use of the existing housing stock.

Reducing emissions and adapting to climate change

We will ask candidates to:

• Commit to embedding support and funding for the Zero Carbon Cumbria Partnership into the Mayoral Authority’s work to meet its remit for energy and climate change planning.
• Commit to the actions in the Zero Carbon Cumbria Emissions’ Reduction Action Plan.
• Work to make the county’s infrastructure, communities and environment more resilient to the climate change driven extreme weather events which Cumbria is susceptible to.

A visitor levy for Cumbria

We will ask candidates to:

• Implement a visitor levy to address the invisible burden that tourism imposes on the landscape and communities of Cumbria and the Lake District.
• Support a transition to more sustainable, regenerative forms of tourism that combine a high quality and meaningful visitor experience with lower impact on the landscape.
• Explain how they propose to deal with the impacts of tourism on the people and environment of Cumbria, including addressing the fact that the Government allocates just 26 pence of funding per visitor to the Lake District National Park, if they choose not to use the power to implement a visitor levy.

A new model of regenerative tourism

We will ask candidates to:

• Lead the development of a model of regenerative tourism so that the visitor economy has a positive impact on Cumbria, leaving the communities, businesses and environment of the county better than they were before.
• Develop a county-wide strategy to deal with the blight of antisocial behaviour such as fly-camping, littering, damage to property and habitats, and fly-parking that prevents access for emergency service vehicles, buses and farmers.

Protecting Cumbria’s landscape by giving equal importance to the natural environment and community alongside economic growth

We will ask candidates to:

• Embed green infrastructure, carbon reduction, landscape resilience and health and well-being into an overarching Spatial Development Strategy for the county.
• Deliver the Cumbria Local Nature Recovery Strategy to restore, enhance and increase the wildlife of the county.
• Work with farmers and food producers to implement national Sustainable Farming Initiative recommendations, back new farming methods to reduce their impact on the environment and remove barriers to training and support the well-being of farmers.

Recognising the role of the landscape and environment of the county to improving the health and wellbeing of Cumbria’s population

We will ask candidates to:

• Recognise that Cumbria’s landscapes and wider environment underpin healthy communities and a healthy economy.
• Ensure that all residents of Cumbria, especially those in the most deprived areas, get access to green spaces to improve their health and well-being through nature-connectedness.
• Commit to building green social prescribing into the Cumbrian Health Service provision as a foundation of reducing health inequalities in the county.