Gold – David Bellamy Conservation Award

We received some excellent news this week! David Bellamy has awarded all five of our holiday parks with the ‘Gold – David Bellamy Conservation Award 2014/15 accolade’.  This award to all of our holiday parks is a great achievement. We will continue to improve, encourage and educate on the importance of:

• sustaining the environment
• encouraging wildlife
• reducing the use of energy
• minimising waste
• supporting the local community

Further information

The British Holiday Home Parks Association has provided further information about the award:

The David Bellamy Conservation Award Scheme is one of the longest running green tourism awards in the UK. The idea of the scheme was first sown when David Bellamy gave a talk to members of the camping, caravanning and holiday home park industry. He gave the audience members a challenge to be part of the environmental solution and not part of the problem. David was then invited to visit many parks and was amazed at the wide range of work that the most forward-thinking owners were doing for the environment. David was so impressed that a partnership was formed between the Conservation Foundation (the environmental organisation that David co-founded to help businesses get involved in conservation) and the British Holiday & Home Parks Association to set up an award scheme.

Pilot programme

The scheme started with a pilot programme in 1996 and the first awards were made in 1997. As is the case today, assessors for the scheme were drawn from local wildlife trusts and other local conservation bodies. The idea behind the awards has also remained the same since those early days: to celebrate what the best parks are doing for the British countryside and to encourage others to follow their lead. “One of the first comments David made about the scheme remains true today: “My dream is to upgrade all caravan parks up to some sort of conservation status so that they can educate the visiting public and help them respect and care for the countryside.”

Gumnut award scheme

In the years since it was set up, the David Bellamy Conservation Awards scheme has grown in scope and stature. It has even inspired similar award schemes abroad. Most notable the Gumnut award scheme in Australia which plays a similar role in that country’s camping and caravanning world. The scheme has developed organically, but saw a major revision of its judging criteria in 2007/8. This was done to acknowledge the increasing importance of sustainability issues such as energy saving on both the industry, public and governmental agendas.

With more and more businesses realising that being green is something that is well worth doing, the future of the scheme looks set to be as exciting and innovative as its past.

Further details about the award can also be seen by clicking on this link ‘David Bellamy’