I am organise a small event tomorrow for 2 lots of 30 in the New Forest.
After a lot of hassle we finally got our permit yesterday! The charge for using their land is £150 + VAT! I had been led to believe that during reduced numbers this fee would be reduced to £50 per event. We're looking at nearly £3 per competitor before we event set foot on the land.
What have other clubs found?
We are going to really suffer as we're only allowed 30 runners and virtually all our events are on FE land.
Discuss please.
FE Fees
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Re: FE Fees
NOC have just notified us that their event is cancelled for basically the same reasons. Not viable within these contraintsd. Note the 30 includes all your organising team, not just entries!
CLOK found the same a couple of weeks ago.
CLOK found the same a couple of weeks ago.
"If A is success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut" Abraham Lincoln
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LostAgain - diehard
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Re: FE Fees
I believe BO have recently signed a new agreement with FE, which significantly increases fees esp. for small events, which was incredibly badly communicated and which seems to fly in the face of the support clubs need in gettibg access to areas for events.
With increased travel restrictions the short-medium term future will be local events, not big national ones, and these are now being priced out of existence.
I though FE were supposed to be encouraging increased use of their land for exercise - this fee structiure says the opposite.
The only way we'll be able to use forests soon will be for Mapruns spread over a extended period, as individual visitors do not seem to be taxed in the same way.
With increased travel restrictions the short-medium term future will be local events, not big national ones, and these are now being priced out of existence.
I though FE were supposed to be encouraging increased use of their land for exercise - this fee structiure says the opposite.
The only way we'll be able to use forests soon will be for Mapruns spread over a extended period, as individual visitors do not seem to be taxed in the same way.
curro ergo sum
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King Penguin - addict
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Re: FE Fees
Is £3 per competitor a problem? I've never heard any parents of the kids we coach complain that orienteering entry fees are too expensive, and adult sports are typically far more expensive. I'm certainly used to paying a lot more for the other sports that my kids do. Hire of a basketball court for example is more than £3 per person.
To oblivion and beyond....
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buzz - addict
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Re: FE Fees
buzz wrote:Is £3 per competitor a problem? I've never heard any parents of the kids we coach complain that orienteering entry fees are too expensive, and adult sports are typically far more expensive. I'm certainly used to paying a lot more for the other sports that my kids do. Hire of a basketball court for example is more than £3 per person.
Inclined to agree. Sadly, the BO 'Resource Library' still shows the old FC agreement (which existed for some years without review), rather than the newly agreed one!
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DaveK - green
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Re: FE Fees
I linked a copy of the new one in this post: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=15762. That was obtained from our (CLOK) local FE office waving it at us after a recent event.
- Duncan
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Re: FE Fees
The annoying thing for us was that FE only contacted our permissions officer on 30th October re the event on 8th November. By that time we had 200 entries. If they had been in touch earlier we wouldn't be looking at a loss of over £400. OK the club won't fold because of that but.....
Plus - where do they get this crazy 30 limit from?
We had between 55 and 85 people at our 3 back to O events with free access to the parks granted by the respective district councils!
Plus - where do they get this crazy 30 limit from?
We had between 55 and 85 people at our 3 back to O events with free access to the parks granted by the respective district councils!
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Re: FE Fees
King Penguin wrote:I wonder how much Parkrun pay for 200 participants on FE land ?
Why would they pay anything?
They do not charge for their events and therefore are the perfect example of inclusivity, something the Government want to promote and by extention FE also.
"If A is success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut" Abraham Lincoln
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LostAgain - diehard
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Re: FE Fees
We have our own special agreement for the New Forest, so were surprised when it was upped from the agreed £50. With an entry of 60, 2 events of 30 on the same day, plus
£120 for the portaloo, that's £5 before you start on map costs, planners and organisers expenses and disposable covid stuff. Orienteering is going to become much more costly.
£120 for the portaloo, that's £5 before you start on map costs, planners and organisers expenses and disposable covid stuff. Orienteering is going to become much more costly.
- Tatty
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Re: FE Fees
King Penguin wrote:I wonder how much Parkrun pay for 200 participants on FE land ?
Parkrun have a policy of not paying for access. Indeed, the government seriously considered legislation to make it illegal for public bodies to charge Parkrun for land access, and went as far as to carry out a public consultation.
However, Parkrun's participants will - at least in normal times - reliably fill up FE car parks 52 Saturdays a year, paying quite a few quid each for parking; stick to predictable routes on paths, well away from any ground-nesting birds, SSSIs or mountain bikers, with no input required from FE staff; and spend quite a lot of money in the FE café afterwards. From FE's perspective, they are a rather different proposition from an orienteering event.
I can't find it on the website anywhere, but here is the info that went out in the October British Orienteering "CEO Update" email:
British Orienteering has had a national agreement with Forestry England on access charges since 2010. The cost of access has not been changed since then and there has not been a review.
When I started with British Orienteering in 2017 it was suggested to me that perhaps it would not be in the interest of the sport to revisit this as in all likelihood the outcome would be an increase in charges.
SOA has an existing agreement with Forestry Enterprise Scotland.
Forestry England has in recent years had a change in leadership and has become more commercialized. They approached us for a new national (England) agreement based on the SOA agreement.
We have been negotiating with them for a while with a couple of sticking points, primarily around the minimum charge for small events as this was much greater than in the old contract and would have an impact on smaller events.
They have set a minimum charge of £126 for events that have under 150 adults – this is to cover their costs of administering the application process for access.
The agreement was signed in August of this year.
The Board recognise that this is a large increase in terms of the “old” agreement and has not left any time for event organisers to plan for this increase. In addition to this, Forestry England is currently restricting events to a maximum of 30 people and therefore all events are facing the minimum charge. British Orienteering will cover 50% (£63) of the fees imposed on clubs organising events that have participation below 150 adults and have been charged the full rate of £126 between August 2020 and the end of March 2021.
We are still clarifying with Forestry England the situation around activities, especially for junior members (all charges within the contract relate to adult participation only) as we are aware that some clubs have been charged for these and the new contract does not address this.
We have also contacted them and requested waiving any access fee at the moment as they are imposing a limit on access numbers and we feel that this is not in the spirit of the agreement and there are exceptional circumstances. We are waiting for a response.
British Orienteering Director | Opinions expressed on here are entirely my own, and do not represent the views of British Orienteering.
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Scott - god
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Re: FE Fees
Do we have an up-date on this from BO? Forestry England should have responded to the queries mentioned in the October bulletin by now?
- Parkino
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Re: FE Fees
Plus - where do they get this crazy 30 limit from?
Govt guidelines from earlier in the year. But fails to acknowledge subsequent legislation which exempted 'Covid-safe' sports, which includes orienteering.
- Parkino
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Re: FE Fees
FE are risk averse, like many other landowners at the moment. Even the British Army have suspended orienteering on their areas until January. Nobody is taking any chances and with the 'R' rate still going up in a lot of places (even here in Kent ) , it is hardly (if annoyingly) surprising.
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DaveK - green
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Re: FE Fees
Parkino wrote:Plus - where do they get this crazy 30 limit from?
Govt guidelines from earlier in the year. But fails to acknowledge subsequent legislation which exempted 'Covid-safe' sports, which includes orienteering.
But the BOF guidelines were not designed to rely on an exemption - they are designed to avoid a gathering of more than 6 irrespective of how many people are dispersed around the forest.
It was an earlier version of the sports exemption for up to 30 to participants will be where FE get their limit from (and NT and Wales). I guess as a large organisation they will have made a blanket set of rules to cover all events - assuming any event is a gathering of all the participants, rather than individually assessing the extent to which any particular event involves congregating. Since the £150 fee is supposed to cover the admin costs you would have thought this would be sufficient for someone to do this.
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