Parkruns on hold in red tape wrangle over covid risks

Five popular parkruns are on hold in a wrangle over red tape and coronavirus safety.

Brighton and Hove City Council has blamed the national parkrun organisers for not completing an individual risk assessment for each event.

Hundreds of people took part in the free 5k events every Saturday before the pandemic – and the council said that the events could resume subject to individual risk assessments.

But the national body did not list the weekly runs at Bevendean Down, East Brighton Park, Hove Park, Hove Promenade and Preston Park among the events resuming in June.

The council said: “We’ve given ‘in principle’ approval to the five parkruns, subject to receiving a covid-19 risk assessment which is local to each event.

“We look forward to welcoming runners and volunteers back to these important community runs.

“As soon as we receive the assessments, we can provide full consent for each event.”

The parkrun organisation said that it has a “national government approved framework” for restarting its 5k runs and could not comment further on local risk assessments.

The national guidance covers managing distances at the finish line, cleaning equipment and recording people’s times.

Nick Pearson, parkrun chief executive, said: “We will continue to work hard with landowners over the coming weeks to secure the permissions needed to return at the end of June.

“We are incredibly grateful to all of the landowners who have granted events permission to return so far and for the groundswell of support for parkrun over recent days.

“Although it is disappointing not to be able to return on Saturday 5 June, we are still optimistic that we can return parkrun events to nearly 600 communities across England very soon.

“We will do everything we can to ensure events restart on Saturday 26 June.”