KENDAL businesses are celebrating the reopening of Victoria Bridge by displaying messages and offers aimed at visitors to the town.

The #bridgeisback campaign is the brainchild of the Kendal Business Improvement District (BID) and includes a range of shopping, dining and leisure offers and messages from businesses in the town.

Shops, restaurants, cafes, and visitor attractions are displaying specially designed posters to showcase their offers and messages, with some of the goodies including free eye tests at Specsavers, discounts on monthly gym memberships at The Vault Gym and general messages of support and goodwill.

Kendal’s Victoria Bridge – locally known as the Batman Bridge due to the shape of its cut outs - was officially closed on January 13 following the discovery of structural damage caused by Storm Desmond in December.

Its closure resulted in traffic disruption and delays to local residents, businesses and visitors to the town.

Sarah Williams, Manager of Kendal BID, said: “Kendal’s certainly had a rough time of it recently with the floods before Christmas and more recently the weeks of traffic delays from the enforced closure of Victoria Bridge.

“The feeling we have from businesses is that people, unsurprisingly, have been staying away from the town.

“We’re hoping that this campaign will work two-fold by celebrating the re-opening of Victoria Bridge and the end of the traffic chaos, and also encouraging people to come back into the town with some shopping and dining incentives.”

Businesses are encouraged to post images of their posters with #bridgeisback on social media and Kendal BID will retweet and repost.

The posters were designed and produced by Kendal-based Designworks.