London Marathon bosses are to run the Brighton Marathon, enabling the event to go ahead next year, after an urgent town hall meeting today (Monday 28 November).
Councillors agreed that London Marathon Events, which organises Britain’s biggest annual marathon, should take over from Grounded Events which is in financial trouble.
Opposition councillors asked why they had not been told about the seriousness of the situation until just a “few days” before the meeting today.
And the Conservative and Labour councillors complained that they knew nothing about talks with London Marathon Events.
Conservative councillor Samer Bagaeen asked how Grounded Events had managed to run up a £150,000 debt with Brighton and Hove City Council and why it was being “bailed out”.
He also asked why nothing was done to stop the company from continuing to operate its website promoting the event which is scheduled for Sunday 2 April next year.
Donna Chisholm, an executive director at the council, said that it was not bailing out the company but protecting the money paid by charities and runners to enter the race next year.
London Marathon Events had agreed to honour all entries, she said, and the £150,000 debt was due for office space rented from the council.
Ms Chisholm said: “It is not uncommon for businesses to be in debt to the council if they are council tenants in one form or another.
“We were aware that Grounded Events and other tenants have back payments owing to the council.
“The council’s position is always to try to support local businesses to enable them to recover and give them as much leeway as we can to support that and jobs.”
She said that Grounded Events had assured the council several times that it had a recovery plan and was a viable business.
The council’s outdoor events manager Ian Baird said that the council could not control how companies promoted proposed events locally that did not have a licence – other than asking them to stop.
Labour councillor Amanda Evans was angry that opposition councillors had been kept in the dark about the seriousness of the situation.
Councillor Evans said: “I do think in a committee system of council, where the administration has only 20 seats out of 54, it’s a bit shocking that opposition spokespeople were not consulted at all and knew nothing about it when clearly there has been a lot of discussion about this.
She told the council’s Tourism, Equalities, Communities and Culture (TECC) Urgency Sub-Committee: “I’m a bit shocked we’ve only heard about this two to three days before an emergency sub-committee.”
