Click here to search commentonline

Road Closure Orders Invalid, ACRE Confirms

Open Roads the only option for the weekend race

ACRE - the pressure group formed to oppose the closure of 81 miles of Highland Perthshire roads this weekend for a mass cycle race - has established that Perth and Kinross has failed to comply with the necessary legislation with the result that closure orders banning motor traffic published in the press last month are invalid.

Under Road Traffic Act legislation, the council was supposed to get the authority of Scottish government ministers before issuing the orders. Advertisements of the orders published by the council in April announced that these had been obtained, “with the consent of Scottish Ministers as Trunk Roads Authority…”

But this statement was untrue. To date, three days before the event is due to take place, no such applications have been received by Holyrood and legal advice obtained by ACRE (Anti Closed Road Events) suggests it is too late to take remedial action.

11th Hour Revamp

With more than 2000 cyclists due to arrive for the race on Sunday (May 18), ACRE is calling on the organisers, Etape Caledonia, and Perth and Kinross Council, to revamp the arrangements and hold the event on open roads. ACRE has always argued in favour of cycle events, and offered to help with marshalling, but has been strongly opposed to closing the roads, a measure foisted undemocratically on the local community by Perth and Kinross Council.

When the event was held last year, at least fifty local businesses suffered losses because customers could not reach their premises and dozens of other businesses lost trade because the Tay and Tummel valleys were perceived as being inaccessible by car.  In 2008, many hundreds of local residents will again be effectively imprisoned in their homes, and those wishing to worship will be unable to attend church services.

Other Challenges

ACRE has other potential legal challenges to the way the Council has acted including the way the event has been configured as a race, rather than a cycle trial. It has also made a formal complaint to P&K that the shoddy and duplicitous way it has handled the controversial event amounts to maladministration.

ACRE has 550 supporters who have signed a petition opposing the road closures and many have pledged money for a legal fighting fund. Action for judicial review is now being considered. The organisation is also poised to take matters to the Local Authority Ombudsman.

It has sent a strong challenge to the Scottish Executive regarding the inadmissibility of the legislation being used by Perth and Kinross Council to close roads but has been told that this cannot be considered.

Peter Hounam, a spokesman for ACRE, said his organisation was issuing this statement to everyone with authority and demanding that they act immediately on the question of the orders being invalid. “We are approaching the Chief Constable, the Procurator Fiscal, the Scottish Government, MPs and Perth and Kinross Council so that the event can still be run and no one will be disappointed. It was ludicrous that Etape Caledonia decided to cram the start of 2000 people in a 30 minute time slot. It is not too late to spread the start over several hours so that the event  can be held on open roads and the normal local and tourist traffic can get through.”

Cock Up

Hounam said: “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 now 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 expected here 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 them two years running out of the pockets of the same local taxpayers that the closures discriminate against.”

Hounam added: “The question arises - why is Etape Caledonia holding a race disguised as a trial? If the event was 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.

"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 are 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, with all the anticipated 2000 participants starting in just 30 minutes from 7am to 7.30am. They are also seeding the faster competitors, who they desperately want to attract, so that they can 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.”

ACRE points out that P&K has also slipped up by trying to close the wrong roads and failing to cover in its closure listing a vital section of the course. The official orders for last year’s race, as well the proposed coming race, closed the U162 up Glen Lyon (not on the Etape route) in mistake for the U179 Duneaves Road near Fortingall, which is on the route. Another blunder is that the Foss road, along the south side of Loch Tummel, is to be closed again this year, although the shortened race along this stretch has been abandoned by the organisers.

SEE ALSO:

Protest Protocol - Advice from ACRE