County council promises £700,000 to leisure, tourism and travel business initiatives

Warwickshire County Council is to support three new projects to help safer travel and various business initiatives across the region.

Councillors at this week's cabinet meeting supported allocating more than £700,000 to the schemes with the money coming from the revenue investment fund.

The safe and active travel project will receive £103,000 to help encourage residents to take up more physical activity for travel, promote safe walking and cycling, change public attitudes and habits around safe and active travel. It will also encourage businesses to sign up to become safe and active workplace accredited businesses.

A further £107,000 has been earmarked for the Jump Start project which aims to help people start a business and to increase the number of sustainable new businesses. The priority will be underrepresented groups and hard-to-reach individuals in deprived parts of the county.

The largest sum, nearly £514,000, will go to a project supporting tourism and leisure businesses. The money will be used to establish and deliver a dedicated business support programme to support the sector as it recovers from lockdown.

The initiative will work alongside the new Visit Warwickshire marketing campaign promoting the county as a safe, open destination for visitors and a further £262,000 will come from the European Regional Development Fund.