Approval has been granted to submit a joint application to Visit England and form a strategic partnership that promotes tourism and improves visitors across Hampshire.

The three upper-tier authorities of Hampshire, Southampton, and Portsmouth have submitted a joint application to Visit England to form a Local Visitor Economy Partnership (LVEP) for Hampshire and the Solent.

The scheme from Visit England (VE), the national tourist board responsible for marketing and improving England’s tourism, aims to simplify and target marketing support for those areas.

As Hampshire is not currently covered by an LVEP, Visit England has withdrawn all support, marketing, and funding to the area.

Whilst an LVEP does not come with any direct funding, not being covered by one means that Hampshire and the Solent are not able to bid for funding streams or benefit from any other support from VE.

This means the region and its individual visitor attractions are not benefiting from targeted marketing and funding for specific projects.

Therefore, Hampshire County Council has given the green light to submit the joint application in order to identify opportunities to improve visitors’ economy and tourism offer across the country.

Tourism South East has agreed to submit an LVEP application on behalf of the authorities. If the application is successful, it will act as the accountable body for the LVEP.

Cllr Zoe Huggins, executive member for Hampshire 2050 (climate change, culture and partnerships), welcomed the news and said that the decision would benefit the wider community and the council‘s strategic work with the wider authorities such as Portsmouth and Southampton.

She said: “I think all of us can welcome this move to more strategic regional work and what I would call also preserving our heritage and our culture across and through those corridors between those authorities and obviously the tourism community and the economic benefits that that brings.”

Cllr Jonathan Glen said that tourists from cruise ships are directed to visit places like Stoneham, which is “missing a lot of Hampshire”.

Cllr Glen said: “They are not being directed to places like Winchester.

“We need to get into these organisations so they advise tourists to have a look at Winchester; there is a lot to look at.”

Cllr Malcolm Wallace asked why the partnership wasn’t done sooner, knowing that without an LVEP, Visit England would remove the funding.

HCC officers said that a number of reasons were involved but highlighted that implementing the partnership took “slightly longer” due to the complexity of working across different local authorities’ boundaries.