INTEREST in taking over Ulverston’s Tourist Information Centre (TIC) is mounting, with several groups set to make bids by the September 24 deadline.

South Lakeland District Council will stop running the facility, with those in Windermere and Kendal, next spring due to mounting costs and a decline in services offered by the centres.

Nine expressions of interest to run the cent-res – three for Ulverston – have been received from ‘very diverse’ organis-ations and individuals.

At Monday’s town council meeting, The Gill resident Geoff Dellow said he had a group of 18 volunteers ready to keep the Coronation Hall-based facility open if the council could raise its bud-get precept by 0.3per cent to generate an extra £18,000.

Mr Dellow, who handed in a petition signed by 410 people supporting his plan, said: “Here is an ideal opportunity for the community to get involved.

“There is a feeling in the town that there is a job to be done.”

Mayor Phil Lister said the council could not review its precept until the end of March, the same time that South Lakeland District Council will cut ties with the TIC.

Coun Janette Jenkinson added: “I know 410 people have signed the petition, but we have an electorate – 9,234 who went out to vote at the last local election – and they need to be consulted.

“At a time when things are tight, to raise the precept by that much would need their verification.”

Ulverston Community Partnership (UCP), a town council quango, has exp-ressed an interest to SLDC, but chairman Paul Jarvis told the meeting the authority’s request for bids to include a viable business plan to support the TIC could be a stumbling block.

“We would have to find a business that did not compete with any existing ones in town because we feel it would be unfair to take custom away from them,” he said.

“But it would be difficult to find one that made enough money to cover TIC costs that did not clash with other business interests.”

The council approved a proposal from Coun James Airey to back UCP to look at options and work on a contingency plan should no other bids be made.

Mr Airey warned: “Once the doors shut on the TIC, it will be very, very difficult to get them open again.”

Coun Graham Vincent, SLDC’s econ-omy and enterprise portfolio holder, said that in the past ‘eight or nine years’ there had been a decline in services offered by the three TICs, which cost the council about £500,000 a year.