A GAY couple have slammed bosses at a Lake District camp site after being turned away by staff for not being a "mixed couple."

Bev and Dianne Fenna-Winder were furious after being told they could not take their daughters and two of the girls' friends into Limefitt Park. But the site's director has hit back, claiming its policy is not anti-gay.

Bev, 47, and Dianne, 40, have been together for more than three years and live with six of their seven children in Rishton.

Bev said: "About once a year we take our youngest daughters away. This year we decided to look for a bigger site so there would be more facilities for the children.

"I went before Dianne and the four girls and the man on the gate said there were spaces available.

"When I said there was a party arriving later, he asked who was coming. I told him it was four girls and another adult and he asked me what sex the adult was. "When I told him Dianne was on her way, he said they only took families. I explained we were a family but he said they defined families as mixed couples, with or without children."

Dianne said: "I spoke to the managing director to find out what the site's policy was. He said under no circumstances would they take same sex groups.

"I explained we were a family but he said their policy was mixed couples only. That's the thing that really upset us.

"We're not hell-raisers. We're a quiet family."

Bev added: "It may just be a sad by-product of the wording but I think he is excluding gays by having this policy." Bob McMillan, director of Lake District Leisure Pursuits Ltd, which owns Limefitt Park, said: "We are here to provide family holidays for campers and to keep out the kind of loutish idiots who have just invaded France.

"If we are to do that without discriminating against minority groups we have to have a blanket policy and take only mixed couples, with or without children.

"I feel sorry for every sensible person who is let down by the behaviour of lager louts.

"Of course there is no underlying anti-gay policy but I can't accept gay people and then not accept heterosexuals..

"The only exception is for single parent families.

"There are 30,000 other camp sites in the country with different rules and if people want to go there, they can."

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