EMERGENCY funding of £25,000 for Welcome to Yorkshire has been approved by Craven District Council.

The council’s Policy Committee already gave support to the funding, after hearing from the organisation’s chief executive James Mason that it needed £1.4 million from local authorities across the region, and that it was ‘all or nothing’. It has now been agreed by the full council.

Council leader, Cllr Richard Foster (Con, Grassington) said after the meeting: “Welcome to Yorkshire has had a chequered past, but it is a different organisation now and I believe we need to support it, now more than ever.

“We know our tourism industry has suffered immensely due to the Covid-19 crisis and we need help to extend the tourism season and support our businesses through the winter and into 2021.

“Welcome to Yorkshire is in a good position to help us to welcome tourists back to the area and make sure our local businesses survive and hopefully prosper in the future.”

He added: “We will revisit our funding of Welcome to Yorkshire in a year’s time in order to take decisions on future support.”

Welcome to Yorkshire have put in place a Recovery Plan, ‘Re-Open, Recover and Rebuild’ with the main aim of giving visitors and service providers trust and confidence that Yorkshire is Covid secure and open for business.

The impact of Covid-19 has meant that the Business Rates Pool is unable to meet its funding commitment and the loss of this funding, together with that of private sector income, has left the organisation in the position of needing to request the one-year emergency funding solution of £1.4m from local authorities across the region.