As many of you will know, every summer I go out on the road around the constituency and try to visit as many of the villages and towns around the area as I can. This year was our nineteenth tour and we managed to cram in visits to nearly 40 different places.

The idea is that we just park up for half an hour or so and chat to anyone who stops by at the time about whatever is on their mind. It is something that I really look forward to each year.

As I drive around our narrow lanes and look across our valleys and up at our fells and I can’t help but feeling amazingly lucky that not only do I live here but I also have a job that plays a role in protecting the area and ensuring that the people who live here have the services that they need and want.

I take along someone to take notes of our chats and by the end of the tour we aim to have a really long list of things to get to work on over the coming weeks.one idea that came up a few times during our tour this summer was that of bringing in a tourist tax. A few people suggested that visitors to the area pay a bit more when they stay in hotels, or to visit places. If you have been abroad on holiday you will probably have come across this sort of tax in other countries, it seems to be fairly common in Europe.

Our local councils have faced drastic cuts in the amount of money they have to spend over recent years. The money raised by a tourist tax could be used to fill the holes created by these cuts, helping our councils invest more in the things we all know need more money spending on like roads and housing and health.

But we need to be careful, we don’t want to introduce something that puts people off visiting the area. Tourism is a really important source of jobs around here and we don’t want us to become seen as an expensive place for people to visit or for people to hold back from buying things because they think they could pay less elsewhere.

It’s a difficult one.

Which is why I would really like to hear what you think about the idea. To help with this I have put a survey on my website which anyone can contribute to. You can find it by searching for “Tim Farron Tourist Tax” on the internet. It’s a really simple survey, there are only four questions: Are you in favour? Why? How would you like it to work and what would you like the money raised to be spent on?

If those of you who send me your thoughts think it is a good idea then I will meet with other MPs representing tourist areas and see what we can do to make it happen.