{"id":12249,"date":"2016-03-11T18:09:53","date_gmt":"2016-03-11T18:09:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ihbconline.co.uk\/newsachive\/?p=12249"},"modified":"2016-03-11T18:09:53","modified_gmt":"2016-03-11T18:09:53","slug":"dft-heritage-and-community-railways-1m-fund-open-to-23-march","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/?p=12249","title":{"rendered":"DfT Heritage and Community Railways: \u00a31m fund open to 23 March"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><u>A <\/u><u>\u00a31 million fund is available for tourism innovation is available from the Department for Transport (DfT), with a deadline of <\/u><u>23 March for a mandatory initial registration.<\/u><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><u>The Department of Transport (DoT) writes:<br \/>\n<\/u>In 2014, over half of all money spent by inbound tourists to England, was spent in London. However the rest of the country has many fantastic tourist attractions and a key objective for this competition is to encourage more tourists to travel beyond the capital to destinations outside of London.<\/p>\n<p>Heritage and community railways are an important part of this sector. Every year 10 million people visit a heritage railway. It has been estimated that\u00a0heritage railways are worth about \u00a3250 million to the UK economy. Community rail lines account for around 40 million journeys per year. 45% growth has been seen between 2006\/7 and 2012\/13 in community rail.\u00a0 They are often rural based and many support the tourism industry of these areas.<\/p>\n<p>The Prime Minister announced in 2015 that \u00a31 million would be made available for a rail for tourism innovation competition, funded by the Department for Transport.\u00a0 This competition seeks to support more visitors discovering the UK outside of London with heritage and community rail.\u00a0 This competition provides an opportunity specifically to heritage railways and community rail partnerships to improve the tourist experience.<\/p>\n<p>The scope of the competition is to support innovative approaches to improving the tourist experience offered by heritage and community railways. Within the scope of this competition, but not limited to the following, are projects that:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Explore new ways to improve travel to these railways by public transport by<\/li>\n<li>improving stations<\/li>\n<li>improving ticketing<\/li>\n<li>special offers<\/li>\n<li>disabled access or cycle facilities<\/li>\n<li>Explore options to introduce new services<\/li>\n<li>Explore the introduction of new rolling stock<\/li>\n<li>Trial innovative approaches to attracting tourists outside London (particularly overseas tourists).<strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>For this competition the refurbishment of engines will lie outside of the scope.<\/p>\n<p>It is anticipated that successful projects will increase patronage, increase customer satisfaction, improve access by public transport, and benefit local economies outside London.\u00a0 Projects can be stand alone or collaborative. Projects that collaborate with local authorities, national or local tourism organisations, train operating companies or heritage railway or community railway associations will be welcomed. Projects that can start before 1 June\u00a0will be viewed favourably.<\/p>\n<p>To be eligible to apply, applicants must first register their interest in the competition and receive the full application pack.\u00a0 The application form is\u00a0two pages long.\u00a0 Applications will only be accepted from organisations that have registered;\u00a0 the deadline for applications is 5pm on 4 April.<\/p>\n<p>Up to 15 applicants will be invited to a \u2018Dragon\u2019s Den\u2019 style event on 10 May at the Department for Transport to pitch their ideas to a panel of judges.\u00a0\u00a0Applicants not able to attend the event on 10 May will not be eligible for funding.\u00a0 Applicants will be informed by 22 April if they are required to attend the event.<\/p>\n<p>To receive a full application pack and to register your interest in the competition please click on the &#8216;Register my interest&#8217; on the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cvent.com\/events\/heritage-and-community-rail-tourism-innovation-competition\/event-summary-43c0a64176294c4fa8e0ad650021886f.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">site<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A \u00a31 million fund is available for tourism innovation is available from the Department for Transport (DfT), with a deadline of 23 March for a mandatory initial registration.\u00a0 The Department of Transport (DoT) writes: In 2014, over half of all &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/?p=12249\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sector-newsblog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12249"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12250,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12249\/revisions\/12250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}