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Millbank Die-in bike policeMet Police: Cuts mean no more support for London mass rides
London's police will no longer provide officers for mass bike rides in the capital, in the face of budget cuts and to minimise traffic disruption, Road.cc has learned. Where the Metropolitan Police once provided officers on motorbikes for protests and mass leisure rides on open roads, allowing cyclists to travel as one group across junctions, now a handful of rides will be assisted at the police discretion - the rest will have to obey traffic signals.
Transport for London (TfL) is now responsible for regulating mass rides. The first event to be affected was this year's Tweed Run, whose organisers say they found out about changes "very late in the process".
The London Cycling Campaign (LCC) says "iconic" events like this should be facilitated by both TfL and the police, saying keeping riders together minimises traffic disruption.
Chief Superintendent Colin Morgan of the Met's Public Order Branch said: "Many peaceful events and protests take place every year in boroughs throughout London without any police presence whatsoever."
He said the decision for police to support any event in the capital depends on the "risk of crime and disorder, the likelihood of a breach of the peace or the need to preserve life or property".
Money too tight to marshal
A further police source told Road.cc as budgets were being cut the force had to look at where its resources went, and said most of the time even the prime minister doesn't even get an escort in the capital.
He said: "85% of our budget is spent on people and as soon as you start talking about 20% cost cutting you have to look at people."
"I think most people would recognise that 30 children [crossing the road] with their two teachers need to be together at the same time. I'm not sure if the public opinion would agree that it's reasonable for a bike ride of 100 people to think 'we should stay together'."
Confusion over junction blocking rules
A TfL spokesperson hinted it might allow mass rides to stop traffic if marshals are appropriately trained, but were unable to clarify what training might be required.
The spokesperson said: "We have long supported the Tweed Run in Central London and work with them to ensure their ride is a success. Due to the Metropolitan Police no longer providing officers to support the ride, we have requested that any stewards who look to hold traffic while the ride passes through should be appropriately trained and have relevant approvals from the highway authority.
This means events must notify transport for London and any borough a ride travels through before proceeding.
However, the police source said: "The only civilian with powers to stop traffic, apart from police, is PCSOs and lollipop ladies.
"We won't exempt you from red lights. Even on the annual parliamentary bike ride parliamentarians are told to stop at red lights."
He said while recreational rides aren't high priority, policing a recent die-in in Westminster was "the right thing to do" because the police trusted attendees to be cooperative, adding some political events, like London Cycling Campaign (LCC) protest rides, are supported by police as part of their duty to support free speech.
However the LCC's Tom Bogdanowicz said certain events are iconic and marshaling riders together helps the spectacle while minimising disruption.
"Cycling brings colour and vibrancy to the capital and rides, like the Tweed Run, should be encouraged and facilitated by TfL and the Met. with the minimum of red tape," he said.
"The Tweed Run merits treatment as an iconic London event, like the changing of the guards, that adds to the beauty and rich diversity of the capital . So in the same way as the changing of the guards, the Lord Mayor's show or a Royal motor convoy it should be assisted by the police and TfL, and the 600 riders, in their impeccable dress on vintage cycles, should be kept together in a group to increase public enjoyment and minimise traffic disruption".
London to Brighton not affected
The London to Brighton bike ride will still enjoy police support to protect its 30,000-odd riders at the most dangerous junctions, but while rides like the Tweed Run, with its 600 attendees, were once marshalled across junctions, enabling the ride to proceed in one group, this will no longer be the case. At this year's event hundreds of riders straggled out across the capital's streets amid at times heavy traffic.
Tweed Run organiser, Ted Young-Ing, said: "We don't feel that our event was negatively affected. TfL's guidelines were strict, but in keeping with what should be expected of an event being organised in a major city like London.
"Our only concern was that we found out about this very late in the process (as we're the first bike ride of the year, we are the first bike ride to come under the new TfL jurisdiction) but of course we were happy to follow all instructions and to incorporate all of TfL's suggestions. We look forward to working closely with them to produce a smooth-running and exciting event in future years."
Laura Laker is a freelance journalist with more than a decade’s experience covering cycling, walking and wheeling (and other means of transport). Beginning her career with road.cc, Laura has also written for national and specialist titles of all stripes. One part of the popular Streets Ahead podcast, she sometimes appears as a talking head on TV and radio, and in real life at conferences and festivals. She is also the author of Potholes and Pavements: a Bumpy Ride on Britain’s National Cycle Network.
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39 comments
The Police have just announced they won't be bothering with low level stuff such as bike theft and drink related violence - slippery slope?
Without telling you the firm for obvious reasons, a old company invested £4M into a new programme. It failed on the first day and was scrapped immediately. They however hid it the accounts, says it all.
Yes the NHS computer failed so high profile but tell you what any private sector who tried the same would have failed. Of course in the case of the NHS they were advised by private companies, employed them etc who never once said it was impossible.
bloody hell if you think the public sector waste on IT you should look at the waste in the private sector that far outweighs anything the public sector does.
I once had a job checking that brand-new, unused £250k mobile phone base stations got crushed instead of put on the grey market. I think we had to do 500 sites, or something.
The idea that public services are less efficient than private firms is total BS. It's in the interests of big business to paint themselves as the saviour of the taxpayer, when in almost every case the opposite is true. They walk away having sucked profits out, run down services, pissed off/sacked the workforce and when it goes tits-up there's always an out-clause.
Any government should delay payments for 3 years until customer satisfaction results are in.
Spot on. The co's that take big govt contracts are out to screw them for every penny they can get and also screw the workforce at the same time.
Tweed Run has never been marshalled by the police. Police have given informal advice, but only in their private capacity as cyclists and participants.
As mentioned by others, if you voted Conservative, this is what you have done to yourself and everyone else. The Met are having to make massive cuts and it's only getting worse.
yep and it appears now the Tories wish to close all the things like that as they would be 'against democracy' some free country now ...
the amount of money they waste would make your eyes water. they need to get better at spending what they have.
I know GMP used to spend 4 times as much on some IT kit as thats what the preferred supplier charged, I questioned this and tried to change it but there was zero interest from senior management. too busy looking after themselves to think about the service as a whole.
This:
Same goes for the NHS and the judicial system.
All pissing money down the drain.
Having worked in IT for nearly 20 years, I saw this when I worked within the NHS back in 2000. Tertiary services were privatised and so they paid ridiculous amounts for cheap and shoddy equipment (£1400 for a £400 P3 with 1GB ram & all generic parts).
One of the guys I worked for put his card behind the bar so the directors from the main IT supplier could all get drunk, and they said (repeating verbatim), "Stick with us because when they [the hospital] move into ___ [new location] it will be a gravy train and we'll make sure you're on it with us".
You only have to look at any government IT project in the last 15 years to see that they never deliver what was requested, nor on time, nor under budget. Some are profiting hugely from it.
As Private Eye say, "Triples all round"
My experience exactly: happy to pay £150 for a digital camera from "approved supplier" which cost £50 on high street!
Perhaps they should get officers out from behind their desks in the many new - and pointless - units that have materialised in recent years?
1. If Metplod don't have the resources to marshall the rides, presumably they also don't have the resources to police observance of traffic signals etc while the rides are in progress
2. The marshalling of big rides minimises the disruption for other traffic, so if the rides are not marshalled, and if cyclists obey the traffic lights, they will exacerbate the congestion - after all, they will be a large enough mass, moving slowly, to prevent other traffic making its normal progress of brisk walking-pace
3. I'll bet good money that police resources will be found to break up the rides once they have become a criminal offence under Cameron's new extremism law.
Now that this lot are still in power the Police budgets are going to be slashed even further. My force has been told to expect another 30m+ budget cut taking it to over 37% budget cut in the last 5 years.
There is no money and this latest cut will mean Police officers will be getting made redundant, albeit voluntary. My area, North Tyneside, has a population of about 210k and this coming Saturday my mates shift has 7 officers on duty doing dayshift. It's a disgrace so no wonder forces are saying they cant Police events, they hardly have enough to answer calls nevermind anything else.
The BBC has a story this morning that several forces are now saying not to bring them any lost property because it costs too much to process. If you find lost property, you have a legal duty to try and reunite it with its owner but the police won't help. Apparently because we all use social media anyway (do we?) it's now our job.
So what are they going to do if people decide to ride, arrest them all?
If they don't have pedal reflectors, yes.
Just police scaremongering.
Not sure Escort marshals have got the power to stop traffic yet. Certainly when I've marshalled road races we can request a car to stop but if they don't want to then they are free to carry on driving amongst the event.
This thread has got an idea of prices (National Escort Group* don't list prices on their website) http://road.cc/content/news/77620-petition-calls-national-escort-group-b... - tl;dr; premier cal road race will cost you circa 20k.
*BC motorcycle group, not a sexworkers union.
Though this is disappointing. For the last 3 years I and thousands of others have participated in the 'NightRider' event. (100km in London on a saturday night in June) Not one police anywhere to be seen, mostly everyone was abiding by the law. As far as I know all went off without a hitch. Why would this change make it any different.
What it shows is not the cost but the total lack of manpower most police forces are under due to cuts. Many think if the riots of a couple years ago happened again the police would overwhelmed and quick.
Is it me? but can anyone else follow this.
Due to budget cuts police will no longer attend/escort mass cycle rides in london which enabled the riders to run red lights, and will now not exempt anybody from doing so.
So how are they going to stop the RLJers during a mass rally without spending time and resources (money) which they are trying to save?
It's like the late '80s, when the organisers of the early raves were refused permission to hold events in remote fields because the police claimed they lacked the manpower to police them safely. One organiser asked "but do you have the manpower to shut us down if we go ahead and stage the event?" The answer was - "Yes".
Asking participants to pay the costs for a rolling roadblock would be quite reasonable, in my opinion. Does anyone know how much it would cost to rent three motorcycles with trained escort officers? Say, £50 per hour per unit, or £150 for an hour for a three-rider escort. So, for a large group of riders it would just be a couple of quid each. I'd pay that.
I believe escort officers often do training runs, so in at least some cases this could perhaps be a good task for the new team members. You could perhaps even get a slight discount if the ride organiser is happy to have one trainee in the escort team.
All the government would need to do is set up an easy online availability/enquiry/approval/payment system. Ideally such a system would be a shared resource for all police forces, so that costs aren't duplicated. The police should also be able to cancel at very short notice if their resources are needed elsewhere, but perhaps the escort officers could volunteer to do this on their rest days if they are paid at overtime rates.
and it will get worse as the police cuts will be even worse ...
Everyone who voted Tory in the last or this election, hope you're proud.
At least the naked bike rides will be fine. They stop traffic without the Police.
London's most regular mass ride was always self policing anyway. The met's assistance as it became more established made it smoother but really it works just as well without.
I think local carnivals are going to go the same way now, when the Olympics was on various other (free) events got cancelled because of pressure on police resources. Looks like that's the way its going to go now.
With Reclaim The Streets being born during Major's government I wonder how long it will take for another popular movement to come up and follow on in Cameron's term.
Still, at least the Met aren't wasting money on watercanons that don't have usage licences etc...
Reclaim the Streets!!
Christ, I hope they make a comeback. I'd completely forgotten about that.
What days.
Wrecked on stupid strength cider raving with a guy in an alien costume on top of a sound system in a Salford Van Hire truck.
Ah I believe we've met before then
Similar memories of the ones in London, especially when RTS shut down the Angel Islington, built a sandpit and had a soundsystem on an armoured personnel carrier!
They were one of the first victims in recent years of undercover police infiltration / agent provocateurs
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