Tuesday 26 April 2011

Council charges for parks

Our Council has hit upon a novel new way of making more money, they have introduced charges for personal trainers - and anyone else up to and including nannies pushing prams - for using the boroughs parks according to the Daily Mail.

It's hard to believe the Daily Mail has got any of this story wrong because the paper has a special place in this Councils' heart, with leading councillor Harry Phibbs even having a regular column in the paper. In the article a personal trainer is interviewed about how he was training with a client when he was confronted by a park warden demanding to know if he had bought a "license". Upon calling Hammersmith Town Hall he was told he would have to pay £350 per year for the right to carry on training people to lose weight and get fit.

The Council defends itself saying that it has to charge anyone "running a business" in the park - but we're not talking here about someone with an ice cream van or burger stall, we're talking about two people jogging or doing sit ups for goodness sake!

1800 UPDATE - The Evening Standard is running this story here too.  So in answer to those of you who incredulously asked me if it was true - yes, I'm afraid it is!

6 comments:

  1. Also it includes professional dog walkers, I heard on the radio. All these charges will just be passed on to the punters of course. A lesson in how to hide the increases in the cost of living?
    V

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  2. Wrong wrong wrong. The charges only affect commercial sports operators who are using our parks for their businesses - not nannies, not dog walkers, not teachers. If you were a chef you wouldn't expect a free kitchen - and neither should people use our parks for free for profit.

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  3. Chris, it's laughable to say that it must be true because the Evening Standard are running it. The Standard simply lifted the (mainly inaccurate) story from the Daily Mail!

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  4. This is not wrong.Any body who is running a business in the park should pay to govt.If he is doing as social service then its OK.But , if he is taking money for service then he should pay.

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  5. I really hope that Cllr Smith is right and if he is, they need to let local childminders into the facts - mine told me this morning that she was going to quit childminding if she had yet another hurdle to jump through - and there are very few childminders in this area.

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  6. If the parks were suffering from over-crowding or if these people were causing a nuisance then I'd understand.

    As it is, the park is an ideal place for people to excercise (whether it be with a personal trainer or not). I'd sooner they were in there than running into me along the pavements...

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