UKC

Morning all. please excuse some intentional vagueness, intended to not get anybody in the poo. My teenage kids have been banging on about organising a race/event in  a local forestry commission woods. Their idea sounds to be a good one  so I said I would try to help. As I have no experience of this   I said I would have word with somebody I know who  has done this in the past on forestry commission land (not the same woods ) and a couple of days ago I did so. They used to organise races on a not for profit basis, they have a full time job and this was done purely for fun and to "put something back".  They said that they would "probably" not do so anymore due to the attitude of FC and to the costs the FC wanted to charge them making it very difficult to run without loosing money. My response was that I thought the FC had some kind of remit to encourage usage , promote fitness, get people off their bums etc. the response was along the lines of well you would have thought so . First question : do they ? Second question : if they do would it not be useful for them to have somebody whose job it is to help thing like this happen ? as the person  i was chatting to said that they felt that the FC had become increasingly difficult to deal with.  I can understand the FC making a small charge to cover admin on their part - which i would imagine would involve checking that the organisers had  done all due diligence, got insurance , got parking sorted , toilets etc. but beyond that how do they justify making a charge that would seem to be for profit ?

I wonder if anybody on here has any experience of this ?

Message Kev @ https://www.facebook.com/PMBAEnduroSeries

He is not currently running any Enduro events in England on FC land

.... I'll say no more

They do, but Forestry England seem to be getting increasingly unsupportive of mountain biking on their land in recent years.

It would, but they generally don't want things like this to happen.

I'm quite heavily involved in mapping and planning for local and regional orienteering events many of which are on FC land. Yes, the application process has become more bureaucratic in recent years but our local forestry area (covering all the East Suffolk (ie "Sandlings") forests) does employ a recreation manager who is extremely helpful and supportive. 

There are, of course, conflicting interests to manage, notably conservation, archeology (the Sandlings is full of tumuli and burrows) and forestry management, each of which is consulted before permission is granted for recreational events.  And there are many recreational interests. In our area these have included including pheasant shooting, husky racing, motor bike (Enduro) events, field archery, off-road cycling, Parkrun and orienteering - it goes without saying that these are not all mutually compatible! 

Yes, fees are charged, which can seem disproportionate for small events, but the Forestry Commission is a non-profit-making government organisation. If recreational users pay less, the shortfall must be raised from taxes. Yes, there's an argument that taxes should support healthy recreational activities, but you can only take that so far. I'm not sure I would want my taxes supporting the shooting of innocent pheasants for example. And I'd have a few doubts about Enduro racing.... probably just betraying my personal prejudices there of course.

Martin

Note: there is a difference between Enduro MTB and Enduro Motorbike events, so hopefully no doubts about the former

.... Grizedale FC land gets used by Motorcar Off Road Rallies every year.