So, how do you make the Lake District 'change and diversify' because it is too heavily weighted toward 'white middle-class able-bodied people'?

[Nanny0gg]

Richard Leafe, the Cumbria park's chief executive, said the Unesco World Heritage site must change to merit continued public funding.

I mean, it's mountains and lakes. What can you do?

And isn't that a tad patronising as well?

Ignore the voting. Thought I'd disabled it

Will they do Cornwall next?

You can take kids from poor areas camping in the holidays, you can you can improve the accessibility of footpaths to disabled people.. there's loads you can do.

Improved bus services would be a big help to people like me who don't have a car.

Flatten it and put ice cream vans and cola stalls in of course

Stormzy could do a Wainwright rap.

It really annoys me that when I go to the north of Scotland or hillwalking that I only see private school buses enjoying the countryside (as they should). We should generate interest and wealth in our natural resources by including it as part of the general school curriculum in Scotland. Hillwalking is such a healthy skill and can be cheap (lift share etc). We should promote it. I imagine the same applies to the lakes.

As a white middle-class able-bodied person I help out by avoiding the place like the plague

Dartmoor National Park have exactly the same issue. I don't think that these areas should change, as such, but more needs to be done to improve access. This in itself brings problems and can cause harm to the wilder areas of the countryside which are by their definition, remote.

Several places around here do run schemes to get children from disadvantaged city areas out into the countryside, and are quite successful. Some of them are working with kids from Plymouth and Exeter, who have never been to the countryside or the beach!

Ultimately the great outdoors either appeals or it doesn't. Short of kidnapping people on the streets and forcibly bringing them here what is to be done?

YANBU. I am sick of political correctness and box ticking now.

Unfortunately this mania is all over the public sector and any grant-giving authority. Companies, charities and Park Chief Executives have to answer bidding proposals which all ask more and more of this rubbish.

If they don't have the policies in place or are seen to be "diversifying" etc they don't get through even the first round. It's awful.

Whereas anyone with any sense says, look, the mountains are there, the lakes are there. Go if you want, no matter what race, size or if you think you're a penguin, you're all welcome. If you don't want to go, that's fine too, they might not be your thing, just stop complaining and leave the rest of us who enjoy it to do so.

Growing up in rural Cumbria in the 1980s I’m aware of what an utter monoculture it was and to some extent still is. I’m happy to support anything that enhances the diversity of the place. Oh and by the way, there’s a significant element of the local population who are, frankly, bigots. The EDL is strong here and some twat burned a Koran in Carlisle a few years back. Anything that upsets people like that is Ok with me.

The problem is, it wont be the Lake District anymore. The NT have already destroyed enough of it. Them doing this wont encourage others to the area, it will just put off the existing clientelle as they are the reason it is such a popular location in the first place. Because they are the people who enjoy rambling, hill climbing and nature. The other side of it is that the people they want to attract to keep claiming public money, are not people who would generally be able to afford two or three nights in the Lakes. Most people can barely bloody afford it.

They are litterally going to be shitting all over the countryside and damaging it, just so it 'appeals' to people who have zero interest in it.

I'd rather pay a monthly subscription/sponsorship fee than have them depend on public money and ruin the Lakes even further.

Surely there can't be much wrong in using some of the millions the NPs get every year to encourage a more diverse group of people to visit them? Surely it would help make the UK more cohesive? There are several trackways in the New Forest NP ref the able bodied issue which enable wheel chair users to enjoy it but those paths are fairly peripheral. In the case of the New Forest, an inordinate amount of damage is done by commoners over grazing, cyclists and rider buggering up paths and people letting dogs off leads when birds are ground nesting.

Transport links a must.
Some tv travel show where a person who is not white and middle class visits, perhaps to go hillwalking.

... and we are getting further away from nature and natural landscapes.

They want to change nature... yes just what we need more tarmac and crap.

Hill walking, camping etc will only appeal to certain people. Change it to much and those that do come won’t anymore and those that do come instead will likely do it once then never return anyway. Don’t create more skegnesses

Outreach programme for inner city schools?

plonk a Butlins with all the trimmings in there. Done.

There are already loads of schemes to promote the Lakes to less represented groups and get school kids up there etc.

What would help in practice are more buses, as someone already said, and more affordable accommodation - and yet the HYA has been closing hostels and hiked its prices so it’s less affordable. V counterproductive.

We took baby DS in his pram a few months ago and had no problems with it. Just saying.

YHA not HYA

• wheelchair ramp up Scaffell Pike
• demolish old buildings to widen village roads
• ban white people
• drain and fill in the Lakes
• street signs to be in at least 7 different languages

Ok so I’m mickey taking. But really, must everywhere be “diversified” to the point where it’s all the bloody same? Why can’t the Lakes just be what they are? I happen to think that what they are is wonderful. Anyone who disagrees is under no obligation to go there 🤷‍♀️