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Council votes to charge organisers of free park run

A parish council in South Gloucestershire is to become the first in the UK to charge a group to use one of its parks for a weekend fun run.

Hundreds take part in two free, timed runs organised by Parkrun UK in Little Stoke Park near Bristol. Now, the group is being asked for money to help maintain the paths.

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Little Stoke park run cancelled

Park Run
Park Run Credit: ITV News

More than 500 people showed their support for free exercise today by taking part in park run near Bristol.

It follows the cancellation of a similar event because the local authority told runners they'd have to pay to take part.

Little Stoke Parish Council received criticism from around the world for their demand.

Given the huge strength of feeling heard from you directly and seen from a wider audience on social media we have had to consider the implications of this on Saturday's run (16 April). The safety and wellbeing of parkrunners and other park users is paramount and we are very concerned that this might be jeopardised by the volume of people wishing to run at Little Stoke on Saturday. This could easily exceed the safe limit of the park itself.

To that end we will be cancelling the event on Saturday 16th of April.

The Little Stoke parkrun team, the local parkrun ambassadors and parkrun UK will need to consider where we go from this point. At the current time its very unclear but do keep an eye on our website, Facebook and Twitter pages which we'll make sure are updated as soon as we have any more news.

– Little Stoke park run

Becky Bushnell from Little Stoke park run took part in a park run at Ashton Court as the park run at Little Stoke was cancelled.

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