Summary
Bourton-on-the-Water is the “village that learned to live without its villagers“. That is the view of one civic chief who is calling for a “coalition of the willing” to work together in tackling the overtourism problem in the so-called Venice of the Cotswolds.
Details
A polite overtourism protest was held earlier this month and people who live in Bourton gathered at the Village Green to highlight the impact the sheer number of visitors is having on the community. And councillor Jon Wareing (LD), who represents the village at Cotswold District Council , says Bourton has become a village in which its own residents increasingly struggle to use the centre of their community.
Residents avoid the centre at busy times and report a deterioration in their quality of life and a loss of community, he said. And while Bourton has developed an economy exceptionally good at monetising the presence of tourists, much of its commercial offer depends upon people being there rather than people living there.
Once presence generates revenue, intensity becomes economically valuable, he believes, as more people mean more customers. More footfall means more spending. A village can therefore become more intensively used while becoming less used by the people who live there.
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That is the village learning to live without its villagers, he said. He sees what is happening to Bourton and how the issue is addressed as important for the rest of the Cotswold district, which is home to around 90,000 people. Tourism is now sufficiently significant to influence employment, property, commercial premises and the businesses that can survive, in his view.
And housing has become more valuable as visitor accommodation, while workers struggle to afford to live where they work and young people have little opportunity to remain where they grew up. Councillor Wareing is pushing to change the nature of the debate. “It is simply not about seeking to regulate or control tourism,” he said.
“It’s about considering how local and national government think about what sustainable communities mean in practice. “There appear to be no mechanisms at present geared to determining whether a settlement can continue to perform its essential functions as a place in which people can live, work and build a community when exposed to an economic model that values intensity of visitor presence.
That is a planning question, not simply a tourism-management question.” “I am seeking to build a coalition of the willing amongst all the relevant local authorities to take this issue forward. “The first step is to ensure that people see and understand the driving forces.
Report source: Gloucestershire Live
