Visit England Comments on Spending Review 2015/16

Statement from  VisitEngland, in response to the Government’s Comprehensive Spending Review – relating to VisitEngland’s budget 2015/2016

VisitEngland Chairman Lady Cobham said:

Today, Government has announced a zero per cent cut to VisitEngland’s core grant-in-aid. This is good news for English tourism.   We are pleased and reassured by this clear commitment from Government to tourism in England.

We recognise the public purse is under ever increasing pressure so we are delighted that tourism’s significant contribution to the economy has been recognised by Secretary of State, Maria Miller, and Tourism Minister, Hugh Robertson, in securing this settlement.  Our role is to grow tourism in England. We never lose sight of this goal and we will continue to work closely with Government and the private sector to ensure continued support for the industry.

Tourism in England is worth £97bn however, there is still great potential for further growth across the country. 

Since its creation, VisitEngland has worked hard to reduce over-heads and achieve efficiencies to ensure that as much of our budget as possible supports front-line services.  Retaining our budget will help us to maintain our  core activity that includes: supporting and stimulating local areas and their tourism businesses to deliver, manage and market a quality tourism product throughout the country; amplifying national campaigns at local level through the Regional Growth Fund; leading on national marketing campaigns; providing research and industry intelligence, business tools, and industry platforms to facilitate continual progress and sustained growth.

Our commitment to growing tourism at a local level by stimulating the creation of  jobs and boosting local economies has been recognised by Government.  We will continue to explore new ways to leverage our core-grant-in-aid for maximum benefit to the industry through both commercial and public sector partnerships.

We are committed to working closely with DCMS to further grow this important industry and will continue to make the case for tourism in-line with Government’s targets.