Furness Tourism

The Furness Tourism Partnership, now known as the Lake District Peninsulas Tourism Partnership, has the task of promoting two quite diverse halves of South Cumbria. The Barrow-in-Furness side has a history of heavy industrial development – from slate-quarrying and iron-mining, to steel-making and shipbuilding. Barrow itself is home to Britain's nuclear deterrent, in the form of the four Royal Navy Trident-class inter-continental ballistic missile-carrying submarines. The four submarines were designed and built in Barrow in the 80s and 90s. Before the final one left, Barrow's shipyard experienced massive redundancies. The workforce was reduced from 15,000 men and women to around the 3,500 full-time workers currently employed. Despite its proud industrial heritage, a world-famous bird sanctuary on Walney Island, and the colossal Furness Abbey, the area is not high on most people's tourism agenda.

Other parts of the peninsula are less touched by man's industrial hands, with the pretty market town of Ulverston as the jewel in its tourism crown. The town also happens to be the birthplace of comic legend Stan Laurel. The tourism partnership's project manager is Angela Knowles, who needed a business plan to steer this organisation's undertakings over the next three years, and which would take account of changing holiday patterns.

Three companies were short-listed for the work. Angela was impressed by the fact that two of her partners had used and recommended Porter Brown. There were two winning characteristics, she says. "They weren't deskbound and they were willing to go out and interview people.

"One consultancy wanted to hold vast public meetings where every man and his dog would have had a say and which we would have had to fund!" says Angela.

"Porter Brown came out with a pretty good report," she says. "They identified our key objectives and how we should achieve those. But also, very importantly, they suggested what we should not look to do. Choices had to be made and it's very useful to have an outside view of what those choices should be."

Asked for her view of Porter Brown's strengths, she says: "I think they have a very good intellectual grasp of the complexities of the field in which we work. Both have very good brains and understand realities. They understand how things work. They didn't make unrealistic demands on our organisation in their submission."

She adds: "The fundamentals are now in place and the basic tenets of what we should be doing are in place. As a result, I'd be confident in recommending Porter Brown."

She concludes: "We had a very bruising meeting when we came to feed-back to the operators and Judith was brilliant. She was a real stalwart. She has that grit to deal with large crowds; and both were very supportive after the meeting. They were wonderful."