About the Sustainable Leisure Travel Network

This new network has been set up by Natural England and the University of Central Lancashire to bring together what is known about making rural leisure travel more sustainable. We plan to build on that knowledge to encourage more practical ways of improving recreational travel in the countryside.

Part of our mission is to inform local and national policy-makers about the importance of recreational travel and its potential to reduce car use and social exclusion, increase rural incomes and benefit everyone’s health and well being.

To do that we need partners: people and organisations who will support the network to create the momentum needed to change leisure travel. Please contact us to tell us what is happening in your area or to join our mailing list.

Our Vision is sustainable access to the countryside

We seek to encourage sustainable leisure travel to achieve environmental and economic benefits, improve the quality of life for local communities and deliver an enjoyable experience to visitors.

Mission

The Network aims to:

encourage and promote equitable, enjoyable and environmental travel to, from and for recreation in the countryside,
add value to the work of individual agencies by identifying and disseminating good practice in sustainable leisure travel
develop and share an improved evidence base of practice in sustainable leisure travel through research and collaboration
inform and underpin policy development

We aim to do this by

Sharing information between practitioners, providers of transport and tourism, policy-makers, campaigners and researchers, through a mailing list, web site, conferences, meetings, workshops, briefing papers and other publications.
Encouraging and supporting research into the viability, sustainability, benefits and other impacts of leisure travel to, from and in rural areas.
Briefing those who provide and influence the provision of leisure travel, to ensure that we build on past experience and practice from elsewhere.
Providing a forum where ideas, policies and plans to improve sustainable leisure travel can be developed, debated and refined.