The English Lake District is a UNESCO World Heritage Site

Keith Jones is the Area Director (North West England and West Midlands) for the Forestry Commission England. He has been a forester for more than 37 years. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Foresters. Keith was awarded an OBE in the 2009 Queen's Birthday Honours. He devised and helped to deliver the £59 million Newlands land regeneration scheme and Cumbria’s Forest Futures rural development programme, which helped to revive the area’s economy after the 2001 outbreak of foot and mouth disease. He has worked with Alder Hey Liverpool Children’s Hospital on their redevelopment scheme and was Chair of the technical advisory group for the Lake District world heritage cultural landscape bid. In this Working Lunch he tells Joe Tibbetts how the patience and pragmatism learned over a lifetime of working as a forester enabled him to stick with the UNESCO bid for more than sixteen years. Significantly the criteria for WHS status met by the Lake District could almost serve to define the parameters within which modern place "making" sits. This is all about a proud and ancient community encouraged to better understand and value their own uniqueness and place among other communities. And how that re-valuing can help in the transition from one "age" to another, accepting the opportunities of the new age but without abandoning the existing, embedded, historic values. Anyone with a personal or professional interest in place "making" should watch this genuinely inspirational story.