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P&K Forced to Probe Cycle Race Misrule

ACRE Campaign Demands Redress For Road Closures

The conduct of Perth and Kinross Council in sanctioning a closed-road cycle race in Highland Perthshire is being investigated by P&K’s own complaints department after the pressure group ACRE submitted a lengthy dossier of administrative errors and breaches of procedure.

The formal complaint of maladministration has to be investigated by the council within a set time frame. If the campaign group is not happy with the outcome, a complaint will be made to the Scottish Executive.

ACRE argues that the council used faulty statistics and sloppy survey results that led to councillors being given misleading information before the decision was taken to back the Etape Caledonia cycle marathon, against a strong body of local opposition.

One of the crucial complaints is that the key decision was taken before a much vaunted consultation process of local people had been completed.  ACRE’s dossier says: “With the ‘consultation’ process barely underway - only one of five planned group ‘consultation’ meetings had taken place - the 2008 event was granted ‘in principle’ approval on 28 November 2007; reducing the consultation of businesses and communities to a token exercise with no prospect of influencing anything other than minor details of the event format.”

ACRE also complains that: “(P&K) entered into an agreement, the ethicality of which may be open to question, to pay up to £20,000 compensation from public funds to the event organiser to cover losses, on the understanding that without such a payment the organiser would not bring the event to Highland Perthshire. By promising subsidies in future years it clearly indicated the intention that the event was to be a regular fixture, in contradiction of assurances that the event required the approval and support of the community if it was to take place.”

The dossier goes on: “A (council officers’) report was presented which claimed that ‘the vast majority of businesses and the community’ supported the event.  This contention could not be substantiated by the ‘consultation’ process and is given lie to by the large numbers in the negatively affected communities…”

A further complaint states that, “a carefully researched presentation by ACRE proposing that consideration should be given to holding an open road event was neither debated, discussed, nor put to a vote – reinforcing the widely held view that the actual decision about the event had been made long before, and that the consultation exercise and committee meetings were simply window dressing.”

ACRE is demanding withdrawal of all council support and funding for the 18 May 2008 Etape Caledonia event; an undertaking that no further closed road events will be approved unless a significant majority of the public and businesses affected by the road closures agree; that, if repeated, the route would be varied; and that P&K contacts organisers of highly successful open road events run elsewhere in UK to investigate their feasibility of running one locally.

The complaint, submitted to P&K’s chief executive Bernadette Malone at the beginning of April, was on behalf of more than 500 signatories of the Anti Closed Road Events (ACRE) petition. P&K has appointed Brenda Clough, Community Greenspace Manager, to examine the arguments, and was due to meet ACRE members for clarification of some issues as Comment went to press.