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Closed Roads: ACRE Petitions Scottish Government

Comment makes no apology for continuing to counter the spin and ‘miss speaking’ that P&K is using in the compliant regional and district media to obscure the realities surrounding the closure of Highland Perthshire roads for the cycle race.

ACRE - the anti-closed roads pressure group – is making representations to the Scottish Government that Perth and Kinross Council acted illegally and failed to comply with legislation for closure orders for May’s Etape Caledonia cycle race. If necessary, the group will take retrospective legal action and seek redress for inconvenience and financial loss caused to many local people, 550 are signatories to ACRE’s petition.

In parallel, it is pursuing a detailed complaint of maladministration with P&K pending taking the issue to the local authority ombudsman.

The group is also accusing the council of conducting a botched survey of the benefits that the race brought to the area. The council and Etape Caledonia promised the race would field more than 2000 entrants and attract 6,000 spectators. In the event fewer than 1700 took part and fewer than one hundred spectators were counted by ACRE along the 81-mile route outside Pitlochry, where numbers were well under one thousand.

Spokesman for ACRE, Peter Hounam, said the reappointment of marketing research firm Ekos by P&K would again give a flawed impression of the value of the event to Highland Perthshire by inflating the level of interest.

“Ekos’s staff were observed having such difficulty finding any spectators to interview that they resorted to nobbling people coming off rafts on the River Tay. We know their results are a foregone conclusion, we were told so by one of Ekos’s own representatives. The idea that 6000 people turned up to watch the event is a monstrous lie, but it was being claimed by P&K even after the event took place.

“It is sad that our council will sink to the lowest depths to bulldoze through a project that most of the area never wanted, and still does not want, and then employ crude spin doctoring techniques to make us all think they were justified. ACRE will battle on. Feelings are running even higher, as witnessed by Comment Online’s blog .” (http://blog.commentonline.co.uk/?p=31#comments)

.......A look at Etape Caledonian’s own results lists indicates 1,684 finishers and 18 non finishers this year and yet we are told:

“...attracting 1000 participants in 2007 and more than 2000 this year”
This is an over statement of one sixth. If repeated in the Revenue figures this grossly misleading “error” erodes the increase and must cast doubt upon P&K’s scrutiny of it’s own efforts....

No Ministerial Approval

ACRE has complained that under Road Traffic Act legislation, the council should have obtained the authority of Scottish government ministers before issuing the road closure orders. Advertisements of the orders published by the council in April announced they were acting, “with the consent of Scottish Ministers as Trunk Roads Authority…”  But this statement was untrue.

Holyrood was never contacted although its officials sat around waiting, bemused at P&K’s cavalier approach to legal requirements. They were even more amazed when P&K issued a statement in response to ACRE’s complaints saying it did not need to get permission from the government as it had obtained the assent of Scotland Transerv.

As ACRE has pointed out, Scotland Transerv is not an accountable body. Its role is to maintain the A9, cut the verges and remove dead carcases. It is a commercial company half owned by Balfour Beatty.

On the basis that the orders were illegal, ACRE made a last ditch effort to persuade the Chief Constable to keep roads open and still run the race spaced out over a longer part of the day. ACRE has always argued in favour of cycle events, and offered to help with marshalling, but the police declined to intervene saying they were only responsible for road safety.

Cock Up

Hounam commented: “Since before ACRE was formed, Perth and Kinross Council has treated the people of Highland Perthshire as though they don’t exist. They cocked up the consultation process and they have cocked up the legislative process.

“Legislation for cycle racing on public roads is carefully controlled. It normally allows fewer than a hundred participants, not the 2000 that were expected on 18 May. We know that official organisations supporting cycle trials in the UK have spurned Etape Caledonia because they consider the event a race. They also object to its blatantly commercial nature, and its cravenly proffering the begging bowl to Perth & Kinross Council - which has subsidised it two years running out of the pockets of the same local taxpayers that the closures discriminate against.”

Hounam added: “You have to ask why is Etape Caledonia trying to hold races here disguised as trials. If the event were a trial, the participants would be started over a period of, say, two to three hours and carefully timed. This way everyone has a chance to complete the 81-mile course at their own speed unimpeded by bunches of other competitors. This happens in all other such trials or cyclosportifs in the rest of the UK, and these are held on open roads because they are not regarded as dangerous.

Dangerous Format

“Etape Caledonia insists for purely commercial reasons upon this being a closed road event because it needs this USP (Unique Selling Point) to attract cyclists away from other events. Several others were being held on 18 May. To get support for closed roads it has, therefore, deliberately adopted a format which encourages and promotes racing, and makes the event more competitive and more dangerous than it needs to be. Here all the participants were started in just 30 minutes from 7am to 7.30am. They were also seeding the faster competitors, who they desperately wanted to attract, so that they could race together.

“Hence they have tried and, we would argue, failed to tread a fine dividing line between making the event seem like a trial whereas it is in fact a race. Its own website has let the cat out of the bag by labelling it as a race.”

ACRE points out that P&K also slipped up by trying to close the wrong roads and by failing to include in its closure listing a vital section of the course. The official orders for last year’s race, and this year’s, closed the U162 up Glen Lyon which was not on the Etape route. It should have included, but didn’t, the U179 Duneaves Road near Fortingall, which was on the route.