Posts Tagged ‘run to the beat’
Greenwich councillor’s Run To The Beat U-turn
This is the route organisers plan to use on 8 September 2013, as seen by this website.
It’s good to see any local politician attempt to engage with the masses, and so today sees senior Greenwich councillor and cabinet member for health and older people John Fahy launch his own website.
It includes a blog where he updates us on what he’s going and what he’s thinking. In the past, he’s been critical of the Run To The Beat half-marathon, which he’s previously branded “an imposition on borough residents”.
Indeed, only a few weeks ago, he tweeted: “It would seem the Run To The Beat organisers have failed my test in making a charitable contribution, measly 200 tickets on offer. Pathetic.” He’s not been the only local councillor livid at race organisers, as well as their own council ignoring their residents.
With the new Run To The Beat route almost the same as last year’s, surely the good councillor would be putting the boot in on behalf of his constituents, no?
No. He’s broken ranks with his colleagues.
I welcome the proposed changes to the Run to the Beat route. The balance between the needs of residents and participants has been struck.
IMG are a world wide organisation engaged in all sports activities which is why I have tried, but failed,to encourage a donation to our Starting Blocks charity.
Over many years the London Marathon has brought enormous joy to thousands of people and have made significant contributions to sports legacy in the Royal Borough. My case rests.
Not quite sure what case Cllr Fahy is making – the London Marathon’s a completely different event which has left a legacy in the form of the London Marathon Playing Fields on Shooters Hill Road. Run To The Beat provides no such benefit.
As far as changes, the route avoids Woolwich town centre, easing disruption to Greenwich Council regeneration partner Tesco as well as the Royal Arsenal development, owned by Greenwich Council renegeration partner Berkeley Homes.
Everyone else will have to lump it. To make up the missing miles, the route will cut off Charlton Park on three sides, cutting off access for Sunday footballers as well as mourners at Charlton Cemetery.
There has been no attempt at a meaningful consultation, and neither organisers nor Greenwich Council have officially released the route (shown above). You’re welcome to take part in the poll below, which shows a hefty majority in favour of scrapping the route or changing it so it doesn’t shut locals in. (Here’s a suggestion.)
So why did John Fahy change his mind?
Run to the Beat 2013 to shut locals in again
This is the Run To The Beat route – updated to confirm the route around Blackheath Standard and Greenwich Peninsula. The map indicates it will use the Naval College compound before finishing in Greenwich Park. Route updated 29 March 2013.
Here we go again…
In case you haven’t seen it already, here’s (most of) the planned route for 2013′s Run to the Beat race, planned for 8 September, as revealed by The Charlton Champion on Thursday.
Despite a large number of complaints about the race’s route, and lobbying by local councillors, it retains the circular route which shuts local residents in, despite the start and finish being moved to Greenwich Park. The only people freed from this seem to be residents of Berkeley Homes’ Royal Arsenal development, while access to the new Tesco in Woolwich has also been made easier. Everyone else, it seems, will have to lump it.
Indeed, to avoid Woolwich town centre, the race will now enclose Charlton Park on three sides, cutting off access for scores of Sunday footballers.
Organisers are saying they will be able to open up roads earlier, but despite Greenwich Council cabinet member Maureen O’Mara conceding that mistakes were made in (not) talking to residents in 2012, it looks like the same mistakes are being made again. This map was obtained unofficially – when I asked organisers for a map, they sent me a boilerplate press release about the race.
Let’s quote O’Mara:
“If this race is to return to the borough, it needs to be with residents fully understanding what’s going to happen in their streets, and what’s going to happen with licensing.
“And we need to think – well, what does this bring into the borough? I certainly don’t want go through again, the anguish of the past four weeks. We have to be absolutely clear about why Run To The Beat is here in the first place.
“If residents say they don’t want it, then we’ll have to talk to IMG about that.”
Since then, silence. No full public consultation as demanded by members of the local Labour party of their Labour council. And Labour councillors unable to explain why their lobbying of their own Labour council has come to nothing. No wonder why two have them have had enough.
How closely has Greenwich Council been watching Run To The Beat? Not close enough, it would seem. Council officers did not compile any written debriefs or reviews of of past races from 2008 to 2011, according to a Freedom of Information Act request submitted last year.
Since the streets have already been closed for the London Marathon, Greenwich Council has to apply to the Government for permission to close the roads. In 2012, the council’s agent Project Centre implied the race was a charity event – it’s not, it’s a commercially-run event.
“The proposed Order is necessary to enable the Run to the Beat half marathon, an annual music-themed fund-raising event in support of several nationally-recognised charities, to take place on Sunday 28th October 2012. The Order would impose “rolling” road closures, which would be controlled and supervised by the Police, as the runners progress along the route. In most instances alternative routes are not required as the roads will be closed and re-opened again within a relatively short space of time.”
(Thanks to Steve Smythe for submitting the Freedom of Information Act request to get this document.)
In the absence of any meaningful consultation, let’s have that discussion here. And let’s start with Maureen O’Mara’s point: “We have to be absolutely clear about why Run To The Beat is here in the first place.”
Why is it here? We already have the London Marathon, which is brilliant, so why would we need another one? The only convincing explanation I’ve heard is that Run To The Beat exists solely to promote the interests of the council’s friends at AEG Europe, owners of the O2.
Indeed, it even has a poor reputation among runners – with complaints last year that competitors were given cups of water rather than bottles (you try running with a cup and see what happens).
But an event like this could be a good thing. Road closures could give communities the excuse to have street parties. The joy of the London Marathon is that is brings people together. Why doesn’t Run to the Beat do this?
And Greenwich Council clearly wants to host a half-marathon. I was in Bath a few weeks back during its half-marathon and there was genuine excitement over the event and a happy atmosphere in the city. Run To The Beat just makes me want to leave town for the weekend.
So, to use a favoured council phrase, why doesn’t it “show leadership” and institute a different route throughout its borough? With imagination, it shouldn’t be hard to create a half-marathon route which can wriggle its way from Avery Hill Park, Eltham, through Kidbrooke, across Woolwich Common and back through Charlton and Greenwich.
Look, I’ve just knocked one up. A proper start at Avery Hill Park, passing Eltham Palace, attracting spectators to Eltham High Street without closing it, passing through a rejuvenated Kidbrooke, crossing Woolwich Common, and a loop up through the peninsula before a grandstand finish in Greenwich town centre. I’m sure you could do better, so feel free to have a play.
Or maybe the council should just tell Run To The Beat to take its race elsewhere. As it stands, there’s a petition to reroute it so it doesn’t shut people in. Councillors are also keen to hear your views.
So should we do with Run to the Beat? Let’s have a vote…
Greenwich Council admits Run To The Beat ‘errors’
The first Run The Beat in 2008. The route’s changed since – don’t know about the outfits.
The Greenwich councillor in charge of overseeing last Sunday’s Run To The Beat half-marathon has admitted “errors” were made in the way the event, which closed off great swathes of Greenwich, Blackheath, Charlton and Woolwich, had been handled.
Environment cabinet member Maureen O’Mara told a full meeting of Greenwich Council that “things could have been done a lot better this year in terms of speaking to residents”.
The event, a commercial enterprise held by sports management firm IMG and sponsored by Nike, took place for the fifth time last weekend, but the only notice residents had was a densely-worded list of road closures, with a map appearing separately in the council’s weekly newspaper.
Blackheath Westcombe Conservative councillor Geoff Brighty told the council that the race had been given the nickname “the siege of Westcombe” due to the lengthy road closures, effectively sealing off that part of Blackheath as well as other areas.
Referring to the answer given to an earlier public question on the race, Cllr Brighty said there had been no proper public consultation and any plans to review the race with IMG would just see the issue “kicked into the long grass”.
In response, Cllr O’Mara – whose full-time cabinet post includes overseeing Run To The Beat – said: “I now know more about Run To The Beat than I ever wanted to know about Run To The Beat.”
“But errors were made this year. It’s about speaking to residents about what roads will be closed, and giving them much more notice.
“This forthcoming session with IMG is not about kicking stuff into the long grass. If this race is to return to the borough, it needs to be with residents fully understanding what’s going to happen in their streets, and what’s going to happen with licensing.
“And we need to think – well, what does this bring into the borough? I certainly don’t want go through again, the anguish of the past four weeks. We have to be absolutely clear about why Run To The Beat is here in the first place.
“If residents say they don’t want it, then we’ll have to talk to IMG about that.”
She added only two complaints were made about the licensing applications for sound stages – although no consultation is needed for road closures if they get Government backing, which RTTB did.
“Run To The Beat seems to create more trouble than the [London] Marathon, so there are questions to be asked about how much earlier members and officers can engage with organisers.”
You can hear all of the exchange between Geoff Brighty and Maureen O’Mara here, although the quality isn’t great:
It’s all welcome – the serious question is what the area gets out of RTTB, and it’s debatable whether there’s any real benefit other than to IMG and Nike – but Maureen O’Mara’s concession that things had gone wrong came out in a torturous manner. The public question Geoff Brighty picked up on actually came from me, inspired by the responses I’d had from the posts on this blog. Curiously, O’Mara’s written response to me was very different – basically, bland council officer-speak which didn’t really answer the question.
When you ask a question at a council meeting, you get to ask a verbal supplementary question, so I thought I’d point out this out as well as the grumbles from her Labour colleagues too.
Nobody put me up to it – it just perplexed me that they’d been ignored, and hadn’t made much of a secret about their bad feeling about the event.
Funny how she changed her mind and admitted all kinds of errors within about 15 minutes of that exchange.
And that it took an intervention from a Conservative, not one of her Labour colleagues, for her to admit all kinds of things had gone wrong. It’d have been easier if she’d been more frank earlier on. Or maybe even listened to the party colleagues she falsely accused of putting someone up to ask questions on her behalf.
This stuff isn’t hard, is it?
But hey, as she told a planning meeting in the summer: “This is Greenwich, and we do not do this in Greenwich.”
Council defied Greenwich Labour party over Run to the Beat
Greenwich Council ignored the members of its own governing party to give half-marathon Run To The Beat the go-ahead, it has emerged.
The race – branded “an imposition” by one councillor – will take place for the fifth year running on 28 October, closing roads and forcing diversions to bus services in Greenwich, Blackheath, Charlton and Woolwich for much of the day, and placing 14 sound systems at various locations.
Heavily backed by Nike, the event is run commercially by leisure conglomerate IMG, “a global leader in sports, fashion and film”. As well as the disruption, the event has also been criticised for poor information.
Now it’s emerged senior councillors ignored members of their own party to give the race the go-ahead.
Both the Greenwich & Woolwich Labour Party and its Local Government Committee – which acts as a link between the party’s councillors and its rank and file members – had agreed a policy that any repeat of Run To The Beat be subject to a full public consultation. It also said it needed to follow a route which minimised transport disruption.
But no consultation was undertaken on whether the event should continue, and the council has approved a traffic management order to shut main roads across the north of the borough. No details of who approved it, or any conditions placed upon organisers, have been made available.
The senior councillor in charge is Denise Hyland – a close ally of council leader Chris Roberts, who is also in charge of the deteriorating situation at Greenwich and Woolwich foot tunnels. (Later information is that it’s actually environment cabinet member Maureen O’Mara in charge of this one, rather oddly.)
Other Greenwich councillors have spoken out about the event on this website – with health cabinet member John Fahy calling it “an imposition on borough residents” and Peninsula councillor Mary Mills complaining that organisers “seem to be able to carry on regardless”.
The row over Run To The Beat is likely to exacerbate tensions between Roberts and local party bigwigs, who are growing increasingly frustrated at the way the council is being run, and the tight control he has over councillors.
Indeed, neither the Greenwich & Woolwich party website nor its Eltham counterpart even promote the activities of the council their parties have run for 41 years.
An attempt to usurp Roberts failed in March when those councillors rejected a challenge from John Fahy by 24 votes to 15.
Run To The Beat’s baffling road closure leaflet
It’s that time of year again – well, actually, it’s later than normal – as the Run to the Beat half-marathon gets set to take to the streets of Greenwich, Charlton, Woolwich and Blackheath. What do you mean, you hadn’t heard about it? Ah…
It’s the fifth year of RTTB, and while it’s certainly become a bit of a fixture for runners – 18,500 are due to be doing it this year, to music from 14 sound stages – it still feels an imposition, a huge amount of disruption for an event that’s much less fun (but causes more hassle) than the London Marathon. Maybe it goes back to that first year, which seemed by all accounts to be a bit of a weather-hit fiasco, and it’s just never managed to recover; but it’s always seemed an event which takes its hosts for granted.
I hate being a nay-sayer about this. I’d be gutted if I ever missed the marathon, but when I realised I’d be abroad during last year’s RTTB, I actually did a little jig of joy. I’m not sure I missed all that much, although you’re welcome to tell me it was great and I should stop being an old misery-guts.
That said, the organisers have at least sent some letters out explaining what’s happening, which much of the area locked in on Sunday 28 October. (If you’ve not had one, here’s a scanned-in version.) If you’ve had your copy, can you actually decipher it? It’s six pages of text attempting to describe a raft of road closures and diversions. I can’t work out which ones apply to me. The one thing missing is a map, which would make the whole thing understandable.
You know, a map like… this.
If you want the map which makes the letter make sense, you’ll find it in Greenwich Council’s propaganda weekly Greenwich Time. (Here’s a full PDF of it.) To get the full picture, you’ll need to have received both this week’s Greenwich Time and the letter from the organisers. Got that? And as for details of where the sound stages are? You’re out of luck there…
The RTTB website currently contains no residents’ information whatsoever, although you’ll find an information leaflet for competitors (“thanks to the Royal Borough of Greenwich whose streets we close”) with some clues about what’s happening, including the sound stage locations.
It all just feels half-arsed, as ever. Even if there was just a “thank you for putting up with us for a day”, I’d feel a lot more well-disposed to this corporate jog-fest. Instead, it’s just “here we are, you’ve got to lump it”. It was one of LOCOG’s biggest mistakes in the early days of Olympics planning – but Run To The Beat still seems to be falling into the trap of taking people for granted. It’s probably to be expected when you’ve been “working closely with Greenwich Council”, another body reluctant to deal with actual, real people.
I dunno, maybe it’ll be a lovely day full of community good spirit and everything will go sweetly. Or I might just creep out of town or stay in bed. Thankfully, I’ll be a bit of a way from the sound stages, whatever I do…
Southeastern miss the beat again
Rather them than me. Fair play to the organisers of Run to the Beat, who this year seem to have managed to keep people informed about their third fun run through Greenwich, Charlton, Woolwich and Blackheath. Well, by that I mean I got a mailout from them about road closures and whatnot, which is more than they managed last year. I still don’t quite see the event ever being taken to people’s hearts in the way the London Marathon has done – partly because there’s little chance of seeing your house on the telly with RTTB.
But with 15,000 competitors on the streets, each with friends or family cheering them on; and a bus network completely banjaxed by the race, how did the heavily-subsidised private monopoly which runs the trains through the area, Southeastern, step up to the challenge of moving people around the place? After all, there’s plenty of people at Charlton station at the moment…
By cancelling a third of the service, that’s how. Despite there being no bus services from Charlton to Blackheath or Lewisham, the entire Woolwich-Charlton-Blackheath-Lewisham service was also canned by Southeastern and Network Rail on Sunday – knocking the service at Woolwich Arsenal and Charlton down from six to four trains per hour.
Genius.
The culprit was engineering works at Slade Green, it seems – although with a huge rail depot there, it surely would have been possible to turn round extra trains there anyway. But Southeastern seems fond of cancelling trains in inner London to accommodate engineering work in deepest Kent, presumably because it saves them having to employ an extra set of drivers each Sunday.
After all, we only pay them £116m/ year to run a train service, we don’t want them to push the boat out for major events or anything…
Run to the Beat all-purpose moaning and information post
This was written in 2009. Click here for more recent Run to the Beat stories/info.
It feels like the last knockings of summer this weekend, so it looks like the organisers of Sunday’s Run to the Beat half-marathon have struck it lucky with the weather. However, their handling of publicity for the event, which is going to disrupt travel around Greenwich, Charlton, Blackheath and Woolwich for much of the day, hasn’t been so good. Some 27,000 letters were meant to have thumped onto doormats last month to warn us about it – for many people, that doesn’t seem to have happened, though. Other publicity’s been carried out via council propaganda weekly Greenwich Time, but that depends on whether you recieve it. Which at the moment for me, is intermittently.
The route has apparently been redesigned to allow car drivers access to all roads. Part of the result is the strange dog-leg via tiny Craigerne Road and Banchory Road in Blackheath pictured in this post. If you’re intending to get a bus on Sunday, forget it. Unless you want to get a 177 for a scenic trip to the top of Shooters Hill, that is. Oh, and there’s no Docklands Light Railway between Canary Wharf and Lewisham this weekend, either. Good planning, lads. Rail and Tube services will run normally.
Other things you might need to know:
* The race starts at the Dome at 9.45am.
* The organisers have a contact number for residents: 020 8233 5900
* The council can also deal with queries on 020 8854 8888
* The event is being filmed for television, due to be aired on Channel 4 in two weeks
* Greenwich Council is keen to hear residents’ feedback on the event – the senior officer in charge is Matthew Norwell (firstname.surname@greenwich.gov.uk).
The residents’ leaflet (572K, PDF)
Where the music stages are (493K, PDF)
Road closures map (881K, PDF)
Letter for residents (91K, Word doc)
Come back on Sunday for photos and… oh, perhaps not.
Run to the Beat gives locals the bum’s rush
It doesn’t look like this year’s Run to the Beat half-marathon is going to get a warm welcome when it takes to the streets of Greenwich, Charlton, Woolwich and Blackheath on 27 September – with residents once again complaining about not being warned about road closures and how to get around them.
Greenwich Council started off the screw-ups by burying the licence application for the event’s music stages in the back of its propaganda weekly Greenwich Time – later partly corrected by an odd “clarification” in the paper. The licence did squeak through, however – I’m told that some people on the council who usually wouldn’t say boo to a goose actually got rather exercised by the prospect of the race returning to the streets. However, stringent conditions were applied to the race organisers.
Last year’s event was talked up by council leader Chris Roberts, saying it promised to “become a major event in the sporting calendar”. This year, the usually ubiquitous Labour leader is replaced by a generic quote on the council website:
The Council said: “This event stands to raise thousands for charity as well as giving opportunities for runners and local musicians.
“However, there were a number of real concerns expressed by residents over last year’s event and the Council has therefore set clear requirements on the organisers to ensure that traffic restrictions don’t impose undue difficulties on local residents, and that noise levels are kept to a reasonable level.”
I think we’ll class that as lukewarm backing, shall we?
So, how are the organisers doing in their quest to keep locals on-side? Not very well, it seems. Over to a reader of The Greenwich Phantom…
Do you know anything about Run to the Beat? I had a less than clear letter as an East Greenwich resident a couple of months ago which rang alarm bells that we might be stranded on Sunday 27th, and looking at the map on the website I think this may be true.
I’m feeling distinctly grumpy about not being able to get out – and the letter sent home was so waffley it masked that we will hemmed in again. I love marathon day, but am I the only one who feels we shouldn’t have to put up with piss-poor imitations of the London Marathon? RttB’s community engagement is terrible – the info for residents page on the website is “coming soon”. When???
Cue a string of Phantom readers complaining that they hadn’t had leaflets warning them of what to do. I live in an area that’ll also be cut off by the route but have been away, so I checked with my upstairs neighbour. No, we hadn’t had anything. Oh dear. This doesn’t look good.
There’s a comparison here with the London Marathon. It’s actually been pretty rare for LM organisers to directly contact residents – but then again, it’s been running since 1981, everyone knows the marathon route, it takes up a great chunk of a Sunday on BBC1, and the date’s set well over a year in advance (25 April 2010, before you ask). It’s also done and dusted by lunchtime, usually.
But as for Run to the Beat… who knows? Who cares? We just get lumbered with it. And judging by many of the road signs that have appeared, that’s an all-day lock-in we don’t get warned about properly.
So, as a public service, and because Run to the Beat’s organisers clearly can’t be bothered – here is the information you should have had:
The residents’ leaflet (572K, PDF)
Where the music stages are (493K, PDF)
Road closures map (881K, PDF)
Letter for residents (91K, Word doc)
Greenwich Council is, apparently, monitoring Run To The Beat’s performance like a hawk this year. Although since the organisers promise to be “advertising more information about the race in Greenwich Time as Sunday September 27th approaches”, you really have to wonder how serious the council is about backing residents’ interests here.
Anyway, if you think you should have had a leaflet from organisers – and that’s many thousands of people in Greenwich, Blackheath, Charlton and Woolwich – then Matthew Norwell is the council’s officer looking into this. If you’re unhappy, it may be worth dropping him a note (firstname.surname@greenwich.gov.uk).
And as for Sunday 27th… if Run to the Beat organisers are going to ignore local residents, then why should we turn out to support it?
Run to the Beat gets council backing
Greenwich Council backed September’s planned Run to the Beat half-marathon through Greenwich, Charlton, Woolwich and Blackheath, at a licensing meeting last week, I’m told, although there’s still no official word on the council’s website.
The council claims 8,000 people were sent letters consulting them about plans to have music stages thoroughout the route of the race, which has been altered after last year’s rain and delay-hit event. Three stands in the most densely-populated areas of the route weren’t given licences, but it looks like residents of the east side of Blackheath (Vanburgh Park) are due to have an east-facing set of speakers blasting music in their direction for two hours on 27 September. The licence is only temporary, so if organisers want to have a race in 2010, they’ll have to apply again.
The Evening Standard, which last month backed Richard Branson’s call for the London Marathon to be diverted from this area because it wasn’t glamorous enough, is an “official media partner” to the event.
Sorry seems to be the weediest word
I wondered why a post about weeds was doing very good business in page views, and it looks like we’ve seen why. A couple of weeks ago, I had a grumble about the triffids that are sprouting out of pavements and gutters in Charlton and Greenwich, and suggested that community clean-up days helped Greenwich Council get off the hook when it came to looking after the streets. (Incidentally, does anyone know how the Charlton Central clean-up day went? I can’t see any obvious difference in the streets, but it could just be me being blind, and I had to be elsewhere that day.)
But, lo, on Friday, there was a statement. A STATEMENT, no less! The winged messenger for this was hard-working Peninsula councillor Mary Mills, who brings this statement on behalf of Maureen O’Mara, the cabinet member in charge of leaving streets filthy. Or “neighbourhood services”, as it’s known as at council HQ. This is what she says, as reported by community site greenwich.co.uk…
“Weed growth and its control has proved to be a real problem this year. We are doing our best to deal with this issue and can only apologise to residents for this happening. I could blame the EU for new regulations that stipulate we have to use a new weed removal spray, meaning it takes longer to get rid of weeds, but I do not intend to do that. We have not cleared weeds as quickly as we should have this year and I apologise to residents for that. We are putting more resources into weed control to ensure that the remaining weeds are dealt with swiftly and that we tackle any regrowth very quickly. I will do my best to make sure that this.”
So clearly, the council has simply not bothered to go out and buy some new weed killer. How hard is it to do this? Do local councils never talk to each other? Those EU regulations also apply in Lewisham and Bromley, but they’ve not had any problem shifting weeds. Here’s an idea, Maureen. Get your people to ring up Lewisham or Bromley, ask them what they use, then buy some. And use it. It’s not that hard, is it?
It’s a shame, but entirely indicative of how Greenwich Council works, that a statement from a leading councillor has to come via one of her back-benchers. Mary Mills shouldn’t have to act as a go-between – the likes of Maureen O’Mara should talk directly to the people who pay their wages. Isn’t that why Greenwich Council has a press office, and a silly propaganda rag? The organisation badly needs reforming.
Speaking of the silly propaganda rag, last week’s Greenwich Time featured an odd little story about the Run to the Beat half-marathon and its licence application.
The previous week, Greenwich Time had buried a licence application for the event, condemned by participants for being badly organised and by some locals for the disruption caused, but the application didn’t feature either the name of the event or the date; and nor was there any supporting editorial to point people towards this.
And the suddenly, this story appeared in Greenwich Time – “a premises licence application was published in last week’s GT with regard to areas affected by road closures and music that will accompany the fun run, but may need clarifying”. Er, you don’t say. But they don’t reprint the advert, instead directing readers to the fiddly-to-use www.greenwich.gov.uk/licensing website, from where the links aren’t particularly obvious. And there’s nothing about the changed route, either. A slightly different version of this story appears on the council’s website.
I would say that they’re actively discouraging people from getting in touch, but I just don’t think they’re competent enough to even do that. Talking properly to people isn’t in the council’s mindset. Until it is, it’ll never be able to do its job properly.
