The Lake District is a popular tourist destination, but locals say the number of visitors is causing chaos. with some towns seeing levels of overcrowding comparable to Venice and Paris
Locals in the Lake District worry their beloved national park faces serious danger from hordes of tourists causing lasting harm — unless a contentious visitor fee is introduced to control them.
Day-trippers and holiday-makers dramatically outnumber the Lake District’s 40,000 inhabitants, with 18 million visitors annually flooding a 30-mile region, creating a higher tourist-to-resident ratio than Venice, Paris and Barcelona.
While vast stretches of countryside feature remote hills and peaks where nobody can be spotted for miles, most crowds squeeze into small towns like Bowness-on-Windermere to soak up stunning vistas.
For Windermere and Bowness mayor Christine Hallatsch, it represents “both a blessing and a curse” – with tourism’s financial benefits offset by litterbugs, boisterous hen and stag groups, and transport mayhem, reports the Express.
“There simply isn’t enough parking to accommodate all the people who want to visit by car on a sunny weekend,” she said. “When they arrive and find the car parks full, they don’t go home but just park illegally, possibly blocking access to homes and emergency vehicles.”
Growing numbers of stag and hen celebrations have triggered a “marked rise in antisocial behaviour linked to drugs and alcohol”, she added.
Last year, the situation became so severe that the town council was compelled to hire its own street support officers. Simultaneously, police raised objections to proposals for converting a Bowness guest house into a drinking establishment, attributing a surge in licensed venues to a “significant increase in the amount of antisocial behaviour reports and violent crime”.
The annual tally of public order incidents handled by officers in Bowness also rocketed from 268 to 334 within just two years.
However, Michael Hill, chief executive of Friends of the Lake District, argues that whilst there is “definitely some irresponsible behaviour”, it’s the “very scale of the visits” that creates the greatest impact, rather than a minority of poorly behaved holidaymakers.
Throughout the height of summer season, he notes “you’re much more likely to spend hours in a traffic jam than to get anywhere quickly in that area”.
Millions of litres of raw sewage have also been infamously discharged into Windermere over recent years, triggering outbreaks of dangerous blue-green algae.
“The problem is the wastewater infrastructure was designed for the resident population of that area,” Mr Hill explained. “At this time of year, the number of people who are emitting effluent in this catchment is many, many times more than the number of residents.”
Between 2020-2023, a solitary pumping station discharged 140 million litres of untreated sewage into the lake, according to a BBC investigation. A separate analysis reveals there were 140 days last year when sewage was spilt illegally.
Yet Mr Hill said: “It’s not just the untreated sewage that causes the problem, although that is disgusting. Even the treated sewage has high levels of phosphates and other chemicals, which leads to problems in the lake.”
The chief executive also warned that “communities are being hollowed out of locals”, adding: “Housing is under great pressure for local residents because it’s so attractive to buy holiday homes and second homes and put them on Airbnb in places like Bowness.”
This makes it “almost impossible for someone who works locally here to buy a house”, he explains, with some firms forced to shut for part of the year as they battle to recruit staff.
“We need as many people to come here and enjoy it as possible, but it needs to be done in a way that respects the area and landscape,” he added.
Mr Hill thinks a modest visitor levy — similar to those in Edinburgh, Barcelona, and Venice — would help the Lakes “cope with visitor numbers and invest in infrastructure”.
Even a fee of just a few pounds, he said, could generate a massive pot of cash to fund improvements such as park rangers to enforce regulations and enhanced bus services to help reduce car traffic.
Not everyone supports a tourist tax.
Steve Bavin, a Bowness district councillor, backs the clampdown on antisocial behaviour but said: “There are other things that would need to be put in place first for that kind of thing to work well.
“Also, I don’t want to exclude people. Life’s expensive at the moment. If you’re going to behave yourself and go for a nice walk somewhere, I wouldn’t want to charge you away and make it impossible for you to afford that. That wouldn’t be very fair.”
The proposal would also deter some holidaymakers.
Warren Butterworth, 54, from Blackpool, visits Bowness annually for a day trip and believes a tourist levy would “ruin things and stop people going away”.
However, Mr Hill argues: “If you set it at a low level, and you make it clear to people that it is helping to regenerate and protect the area they love and make it a better visitor experience for them, they’ll do more than accept it — they’ll welcome it.”
Gill Haigh, chief executive of Cumbria Tourism, explained the difficulty has been unpredictable visitor patterns – with destinations like Bowness heaving on scorching summer days, yet empty during cooler, wetter spells.
She highlighted that total visits to Cumbria remain 18% below pre-pandemic figures, largely due to seasonal variations. Cruises on Windermere have dropped 20% since Covid.
“I think we accept that Bowness, of all the places in Cumbria that people come to visit, is the most accessible and popular for people,” she said. “We know there are key days in the year where we’re really going to get a high volume of people.”
Cumbria Tourism collaborates with police, the council and other agencies on “key pinch days” to reduce potential issues.
“The businesses themselves, I think, are incredibly responsible,” she said. “They have their own staffing and security that’s there to support around noise and the like.
“One of the businesses I’m talking to spent just shy of £1million in the last two years building accommodation for staff. Those staff then settle here within those communities.
“It’s a really popular place. It’s always going to be a place that people want to get to every part of and there’s a responsibility on all of us to work together to make sure people have a brilliant time, but they do that in a way that means everyone benefits.”
Mr Hill reckoned the issues stem from the “huge range of different visitor experiences” available across the Lake District. He said: “You could be up on the remote high fells enjoying a long-distance walk and at some times of the year not see another soul.
“But at this time of year in Bowness, you’re cheek to jowl with thousands of other people eating ice cream, taking steamer tours, going to the pub, and visiting the Beatrix Potter museum. Bowness is just at one end of that spectrum.”
Speak to holidaymakers, and they clearly value Bowness as one of Britain’s premier tourist destinations.
Alan Whittingham, 76, visiting from Altrincham, said: “It’s just a beautiful place and we’re very lucky. I’ve been to lots of places across the world, and there aren’t many that are on a par with it. It shows you can’t beat this country.”
Kevin Ersser, 57, from Bristol, said: “It’s really nice and old-fashioned but with lots of shops and all the mod-cons.”
Tourism is clearly a double-edged sword that brings enormous economic benefits to Bowness alongside social challenges. Ms Hallatsch said :”We realise that having our population boosted by visitors is what enables us to have wonderful facilities in our town, such as a theatre, cinema, fabulous restaurants and cosy pubs, which our resident population alone could not support.”
Ms Haigh emphasised the Lakes “really, really, really need to have strong tourism and people coming, not just on the sunny days, but at different times during the year as well”.
