Howdy, Stranger!
Categories
Talkback: Bristol parkrun faces park usage charge
Sadly stupidity and short sightedness prevailed, a very sad day for common sense. The councils argument that Parkrun have paid directors is pure b****** and like saying we should never try and cure cancer because those charities all have directors and paid staff. Not only are the council double dipping they have caused the closure of this event until hopefully the next elections where these fools can be booted out of office.
The materials in this website are in no way intended to replace the professional medical care, advice, diagnosis or treatment of a doctor, qualified personal trainer, therapist, dietitian or nutritionist Runners's World, Part of the Hearst UK well-being network © Copyright 2017
Comments
Wow - shame on Stoke Gifford Parish Council for their clueless characterisation of parkrun and its ethos. I guess it would be much simpler to just prevent anyone using the park at all - that would keep the maintenance costs down!
Given the (wholly negative) publicity that this is now generating, I wouldn't surprised to see a fairly swift reversal of the decision.
Gong after parkrun seems like possibly the least effective way of raising money that anyone could imagine.
The fact that the names and private email addresses of council members was published on their website is.. well, it can't end well
BMF is a profit making business so I could see a small charge would be fair?
Parkrun must be free though.
Petition to sign here https://www.change.org/p/stoke-gifford-parish-council-keep-little-stoke-parkrun-in-little-stoke-park
The council guy on the news this morning was saying that if they don't give permission to parkrun to use the park then they cannot be insured. Is that the case? Does parkrun have to be insured?
"parkrun is recognised by Run in Britain, part of UK Athletics, and although it has not received any direct public funding, the parkruns are covered by the UK Athletics insurance scheme for clubs. This benefit has a low public cost, as the insurance scheme already operates nationally and is funded through subscriptions from members of UKA affiliated running clubs and from UKA affiliated races, however it represents a significant cost saving to parkrun, and is a strong example of a carefully identified low cost intervention realising significant benefit."
My concern is that if one council or other landowner decide to charge then lots of others will try to follow suit: could be an easy money earner for some, often would be £3-400 every Saturday morning for not doing a lot.
You could always, er, run to it and leave the car at home/further away?
It's not a parking charge - they don't charge for parking. They want to levy a charge for the actual running.
They should charge for parking instead of for parkrun. Problem solved.
The trouble with this is if, say, a thousand people turn up at the park, it would give the council the perfect opportunity to say 'we told you so - thousands are going to damage the park'. The local parkrun has appealed to people not to do this, and not to send abusive emails to the council or councillors, and that they want to sort it out themselves. Seems reasonable to me.