Present:
Hopton Castle Residents: Jon Allen, John Williams, Veronica Mellings, Jack Chapman and Roy Mason
Lindsey and David Pearce from Pearce Cycles and Nicola Cowell from Forestry England.
We discussed the areas of responsibility for events between Forestry England and event organisers – in very broad terms it goes as follows;
Organisers approach Forestry England if they wish to hold an event on their land. There is then a discussion on scheduling the event and Forestry England ensure appropriate risk assessment and plans are put in place.
The event organisers are responsible for the events themselves including issues such as traffic management and any liaison with the local community.
We talked about how the Parish Meeting and Pearce Cycles liaise with each other and give feedback. We agreed this would be done as necessary by email, and phone if required. Although, probably in January, there would be an exchange of emails concerning events scheduled for that year. Nicola kindly undertook to keep the Parish Meeting informed of any events not connected with Pearce Cycles so that we can liaise with these organisers as necessary.
On the question of traffic management the following points were raised;
1. Because of the resource issues arising it is unlikely that Pearce Cycles will be able to provide marshals to manage traffic issues at their events. Lindsey also pointed out that in any event marshals could not enforce compliance with the traffic management arrangements if individuals chose to ignore them. Therefore the use of signage and persuasion were most likely to reduce to a minimum any inconvenience to local residents.
2. The occasional incident of poor behaviour by some event participants was raised and it was agreed that the only means of identifying the individuals would be through their vehicle registration. It could then be verified whether they were part of an organised event and if so what action would then be appropriate.
3. The Parish Meeting will therefore need to monitor future events, taking notes of specific issues that might raise concern. It was important that some clear data on the size and nature of any problems was collated before an assessment of the appropriate response could be made.
Hopton Castle Parish 