THE South West Coast Path Association has secured an extra £500,000 for revenue projects - on top of its £1million for capital spending.

The money comes from the Coastal Communities Fund (CCF).

Around half of the capital money is going to repairing storm damaged parts of the 630 mile South West Coast path.

But the revenue money is to help create sustainable jobs, says association director Esther Pearson.

She said: “As well as the investment in capital projects to repair the path we have been able to secure an additional half a million pounds towards our revenue projects.

“The aim of the Coastal Communities Fund (CCF) is not only to urgently repair storm damaged assets such as the South West Coast Path but to look to the longer term by creating sustainable jobs.

“We already know from research that the South West Coast Path is a valuable tourism asset sustaining around 10,000 jobs a year.

“We were able to demonstrate in our application how these jobs may be affected should the path not be repaired in time, but also the things that we could do to encourage people to enjoy the path, thereby increasing visitor numbers and the jobs this creates.”

She said the project aims to create and safeguard around 788 jobs from construction, management and tourism generated by the South West Coast Path by the end of 2016.

One of the plans is to create a new business membership scheme that allows 1,000 businesses to advertise their eat, sleep, drink, do business near the path.

Another is to reach the association’s goal of having 6,500 members.

Ms Pearson said: “With millions of people enjoying the path every year if just a small fraction were able to support the path by being a member we could generate funding for path improvement projects.”

She also wants people to take up the challenge of seeing how many tiems the path can be walked through October• Reaching Community and Walking

There is a backlog of 32 repair projects but a lot of preparation work and planning has been undertaken over the winter to get ready to start the process of making repairs and improvements to these, she added.

“The £552,340 allocated to this element of the overall Coastal Communities Fund (CCF) project needs to be spent over the first six months of this

year.”

Other projects will see path repairs to the surface to provide better access for people with limited mobility and for smoother use by mobility scooters and pushchairs.