to not understand the level of fuss about the Stoke Gifford Parkrun?

[Lucydogz]

I appreciate that, ideally, Parkruns should be free, but can't understand the level of fuss about Stoke Gifford proposing a £1 charge for this. I pay more than that to park my car when I do a parkrun in my town. Football clubs pay to use parks, as do other organisations, and parks really need the money. Well over 100 runners go on 'my' run, and it does increase wear and tear on the ground.

It's the size of Parkruns that are the problem, then you get the personal trainers/military fitness/circuit classes etc and then my local seafront lawns are no go zones as the grass is so damaged just supposing its free rather then cordoned off. People turning up and running is no problem large organised groups have always had to have permission and to pay sadly Parkrun is now in the second group.

twowrongs it's easier to run from your house, but it's also great for your confidence to see your times come down to whatever the next magic number is at parkrun. Plus the 'see you next week' factor from familiar faces can give you the external commitment to get out the door.

It's classic nudge psychology I think. You go to parkrun because it's easy, local, not an intimidating distance etc. Then realise that the time gives you a target, and running at the same time as other people gives you competition/company/pacers. Then realise (as someone said up thread) that 3 miles a week isn't enough to improve on. So you run more.

lastqueen Yes, there are council taxes. Which no one wants to pay more towards. And central Government have taken more and more off every county council and borough councils for the last few years. Parish councils get almost nothing. No one wants to pay more tax but then we moan that roads aren't being maintained properly, that play equipment in parks aren't being maintained properly, that libraries are closing, that leisure centres are costing more.

The argument that parks are paid for by council tax doesn't really hold water because you could equally say my council tax goes towards paying for the leisure centre, but I still have to pay to go and swim there. Added to which, lots of councils have no park land - in the case of Stoke Gifford, a lot of the parkrunners are coming from other parish councils, so they are not helping to maintain the quality of the park.

Interestingy, parkrun UK accounts show they have assets totalling £351,000 and net liabilities totally £334,000. Again, I don't see why an organisation that is mostly organised for nothing by volunteers should have assets of that size nor liabilities of that size.

Don't get me wrong, I am all for improving health and encouraging people to run. But people happily pay £5 for a mothers and toddlers session lasting an hour to include a cup of tea, will pay £3 for an overpriced take-out coffee from Starbucks, but heaven forbid people be asked to contribute 50p each Saturday morning as a gesture towards upkeep. 300 people = £150 per Saturday = £7800 to keep the turf in condition. Or why don't the parkrun organise an event or two each year to raise money for towards the upkeep of the park?

Good grief. I didn't realise it was every week! I assumed it was a series of one-offs!

The thing is, once you get away from the idea this is a community space, then everyone can be charged for using it- dog walkers cost money (signage, dog wardens, emptying dog poo bins, buying bins) too. You could start charging 50p a day per dog to enter the park or get a monthly pass (or get a license and feed back the money that way). Would the dog walkers get behind that scheme?

It's like going onto beaches in other countries- if you sell your beaches and access to them, going to the beach is a wealthier person's thing to do. Cleaning and maintaining beaches isn't free either, perhaps we should also charge £1 a day for the beach in Devon and Cornwall and Blackpool?

I hate it, living in the UK is anti-community minded, everyone is interested in whether they can personally go around the park at 9am on a Sun and stroll about or walk the dog rather than there being some give and take and understanding that is is better if the whole community uses facilities, takes exercise and does things as a whole. There is a whole body of research showing if people go out of their houses, engage with other people and feel social connectedness with others, part of something 'bigger', then their health and mental well-being improves.

Perhaps they should start charging all those Greek pensioners sitting on benches in the village square for repainting and repair costs.

This is an amazing initiative, self-organizing, with people volunteering time, going out in the fresh air, doing things collectively (which is good for encouragement, mental well-being), taking exercise ( I don't do ParkRun but I think it's great). We want more things like this, not less, our society is broken and individualistic and overweight and depressed enough as it is, without being charged for running around a park (instead of finding good solutions like varying route, every other week, asking for donations, making this a core part of what the council do).

I don't agree with all DrSeth has written, but asking the ParkRun organizers to do one sponsored run a year for fundraising to pay something back in would seem fairly obvious (and this is what say our Guide troupes do, we have free use of a hall which costs the Church money, but it's in return for two fundraising days a year plus Church attendance about 2x a year).

Swimming pools- I'd like them to be council run, our council contracted them out to a company who makes a tidy profit whilst doing the minimum repairs. Again, who benefits from this monetization of public facilities?

How is the money going to be collected? Can't they just run away from the collector?!

The concept of the Park Run is a fantastic one. From 13 runners in Bushy Park in 2004 to thousands of people world wide. It's fundamental principle is free for all 5km.

The only cost is a pair of trainers.

It is fantastic that they have maintained this principle as with 35,000 runners they could have made a fortune if they had charged a fee. But they are committed to the principle that the runs will remain free forever.

Good for them and good for them to challenge the concept of charging for access to a public space.

HP - Many beaches in the UK are privately owned or owned by councils or the National Trust, and most of them have a car park connected with them, in which people pay to leave their car while they are at the beach and that money goes towards the upkeep of the beach. Some parkruns take place in parks that have car parks that people have to pay to leave their car in - those are therefore putting something back. Those that don't have car parks don't.

I think it a shame that 35,000 or whatever number it is now have signed a petition to get the council to reverse the decision but I have yet to see petitions of anything like those numbers calling on Government to give more funding to the councils that realistically lie at the heart of this problem.

Yabu. A pound would put people off. It would have made me less likely to take the kids (I'm a lp) because it's money wasted If they refuse to do it.

MoreKopparberg I'm not sure I agree with you. The annual return for that parish council as at 31 March 2015 states that they have a cash balance of £216,734 (ie, more than parkkrun UK has according to their accounts). They have just had to resurface the car park which has cost £55,000 and the path in the park will soon need replacing at the estimates received for that work are in the region of £60,000. In other words, half their cash balance gone just like that.

parkrun is free and always will be free. The parish council has previously given permission for that parkrun to take place in the park and has seen a money-making opportunity.

parkrun is a not-for-profit organisation. It has a handful of people in HQ and every single parkrun across the world is set up and run entirely by volunteers. parkrun puts half the start-up costs into every parkrun (and at £6,000 a pop, half of that's a huge amount when you think about how many there are) which goes towards the equipment and the maintaining of the websites etc.

If parkrun had said 'Okay, we'll pay you' to the parish council, then all the other councils (most of which will have contributed part of the start-up costs) will potentially try to do the same. With well over 300 parkruns in the UK alone, that would be a massive issue.

But hey, close a parkrun down and the already-struggling NHS can take up the slack.

As someone very involved in our local parkrun I may be biased on this subject :)
As far as I understand it this has been going on for a while and every offer made by the local parkrun to offset any damage to paths - work parties, litter picking, etc have been flatly refused. Again, as I understand it, they do have an alternative course - more on the grass in summer, mainly paths in winter - to ensure any wear and tear is limited.
As for 'non-locals' using the parkrun - it is very easy to find that information as there is a breakdown for every parkrun by postcode - parkrun do love their stats!

One thing that non-parkrunners may find hard to understand is how people can be so passionate about a weekly run in the park. The thing is it is SO, SO much more than that. It is, in the main, local people coming together to support each other to do something physical in a safe, non-competitive environment. We have runners, run/walkers and walkers, we have families who run together, sometimes 3 generations of one family, we have isolated people who now have a community to belong to, we have people with MH issues who have a reason to get out of bed and do something positive once a week, we have women who don't feel safe running on their own, we have people blossoming in volunteer roles that they never thought they could take on, we have older people engaged in their local community and supporting younger people, we have friendships that have blossomed across the generations and across cultural boundaries. And then there are the physical benefits!
All this has happened in less than a year and yesterday, when I thought about our parkrun community having to disband, I got quite emotional (and I'm a hard-hearted soul normally)

This is why it has to be open and accessible to all, for free, for ever.

I don't think £1 per runner is unreasonable, but I wonder how much it will cost to collect it?
My impression was that the council wanted to charge the organisation a fee rather than individual runners.
I did think the runners I saw speaking at the meeting (on TV news) were unnecessarily aggressive and rude, and as for the weeping woman....)

Twowrongs I assumed it was just once a week. Just learned they do it twice a week in that park, Saturday mornings and Sunday mornings.

Nicky Stoke Gifford parish council did not contribute to any start up costs. South Gloucestershire county did.

Stoke Gifford parish council also had complaints from residents over parkrunners parking on pavements and grass verges because the car park (just resurfaced) is too small to accommodate the numbers turning up, as the majority do not walk to the park but drive there. parkrun themselves admit that 60% of those who attend live within "3 miles of the park" with the other 40% coming from further afield. Clearly, the majority of the 300 are driving there. The parish council has also been providing them with storage space for their gear free of charge.

As far as I understand it from what I've seen in the news it's not about the amount, I imagine most runners can afford to pay £1 a time, it's about the principle of free use of parks.

The introduction of a charge would no doubt be the start of charging for other things in other places and if the parkrun organisation agree to one they'd soon be bankrupt once other places hop on the bandwagon.

I agree that a small council shouldn't have to use all their funds for making good damage by 300 parkrunners but it seems that they have refused other suggestions to do this so imo deserve the condemnation they've had.

otoh - it maybe that there's information we don't have that casts it in a different light

This is an amazing initiative, self-organizing, with people volunteering time, going out in the fresh air, doing things collectively (which is good for encouragement, mental well-being), taking exercise ( I don't do ParkRun but I think it's great). We want more things like this, not less, our society is broken and individualistic and overweight and depressed enough as it is, without being charged for running around a park (instead of finding good solutions like varying route, every other week, asking for donations, making this a core part of what the council do).

Exactly hpsauce

"principle of free use of parks."

Exactly this. Parks are there to be used.

"principle of free use of parks."

Yes lovely. But they need to paid for somehow or they will become run down spaces no-one wants to use. And bullshit this council spends nothing on this park - bet the grass isn't cut by pixies and the litter collected by wombles.

I manage a woodland with similar problems. Everyone wants to use it - for free. And it would be sad if people couldn't even walk their dog or ride a bike without forking out. But it costs money. Money to collect litter, money to maintain tracks, money to cut back bridleways or repair cycle trails. Money each time the wind brings down a tree over a path. Money to clear up fly tipping from the car park. And the grants and subsidies for looking after these spaces is disappearing.

StillDrSeth I didn't say that the parish council had contributed to the start-up costs. I'm aware that Gloucestershire CC did.

I entirely agree with what feetheart says above. I started up my local parkrun and on one of our birthdays/anniversaries, we got a card from a runner and volunteer saying thanks for making her life healthier and happier.

Two of our regular volunteers of the older variety say that parkrun gets them out of the house and laughing on a Saturday morning.

We also have two young people doing their Duke of Edinburgh award by volunteering.

Without parkrun, a lot of people wouldn't be running, nor would they have a great community to be part of.

YANBU.

All organised events in the park have to pay. Why should a regular running group be any different from any other organisation, just because they decide it should be free for them while everyone else has to pay?

The Parish Council has said they could have to spend £60,000 on path repairs due to the extra use.

If runners get charged then people with dogs definitely ought to get charged. Running for half an hour per week = easy to avoid if you really hate it that much. And doubt it really adds to existing maintenance costs. Actually our local parks have recently had a load of signs installed telling you how far it is to run between different points etc. So they obviously don't mind paying to encourage running in our local park. Also..the small nudge of park run really has motivated many people to run many times per week and get fit. It's probably more effective than many gym memberships.

Dogs jumping up at you/small children/leaving shit everywhere is a health hazard and scary, and may well put people off using parks at any time.

Not saying they should be charged as they have a right to use the park like everyone (still wish some of them would be more considerate....) but if I had to get rid of one of them I know which I'd pick.

We gave a local run round the park. It doesn't officially charge, however it is in aid of a local charity and they request a minimum of £1 "sponsorship".
It certainly doesn't put many people off as you need to register in advance and it's always full.

"But they need to be paid for somehow"

Yes, they do. Which is what council tax is for. There is no justification to charge people to use the park when everyone else can do so for free just because they are doing so at the same time as part of an organised activity.