Situated at the northern end of the majestic Derwentwater and at the entrance to the Borrowdale valley lies the market town of Keswick.

This pretty market town offers a wide range of attractions for visitors, from shops and museums, boating trips around Derwentwater and countryside rambles to climbing and fellwalking. Few areas can offer a better variety of walking and climbing opportunities.

The Keswick Area Partnership has come together to work through the Market Towns Initiative process towards the creation of an action plan for the town.

The partnership has a wide membership bringing together local politicians at all levels, representatives of statutory agencies, voluntary bodies and the private sector from both Keswick and the surrounding rural areas.

In addition, officers from Keswick Town Council, the County Council's Neighbourhood Development Department and Allerdale's Regeneration Section have supported the Initiative and provided a link with their authorities.

A smaller group, known as the Steering Group, have operated as a working group, developing the ideas coming forward from the wider Partnership. The Partnership has employed co-ordinators to assist them in this process and in particular, to run a series of community events, to develop the projects, to work closely with the Steering Group and to write the Action Plan.

Motivation for the formation of, and action by, the Partnership has grown from two major and basic concerns.

First is the acute awareness of the widely held misconception of Keswick and its neighbouring villages as a rural idyll set in the wonderful scenery of the Lake District National Park. However, while the natural environment of the area certainly is enviable, the social and economic consequences of such a situation can be both stultifying and damaging.

High levels of retired residents, very restrictive planning policies, large numbers of second homes and holiday letting properties, lack of sizeable employers and geographical isolation combine in creating major problems for local people in housing, long term and fulfilling employment, earnings and mobility.

The Foot and Mouth Disease crisis of 2001 was the catalyst for action, with the local countryside virtually closed to agriculture and the tourist industry for much of the Spring and Summer, with disastrous effects across the whole of the economy.

The need and urgency for a diversification and upgrading of the economic base of the area is now generally accepted; however the resources available in a predominantly thinly populated rural area are insufficient to have a major impact on the many issues that have been highlighted by the partnership.

The Partnership and the Action Plan therefore is a unique opportunity towards securing a soundly based and viable future for the local community.