Lee and Crag Quarry to close

As per the news item on the main page, LCC is no longer to provide funding and they will be closed to MTB’s from next year. 😯

Really hope someone can come up with a rescue plan

Trespass?

I Hope the PMBA guys are on this, If it was in my region I would be looking to take it on!

I wonder what the running costs actually are? I don’t imagine there’s a huge amount of upkeep required, and what there is could be covered by volunteers I reckon. Brownbacks, Singletraction, the guys from Cock Hill, PMBA etc – there must be enough manpower to keep it rideable, and the costs could probably be covered by donations/parking fees/honesty box?

What a shame and all because of cut backs. I wonder what the pro Tory mob on here will make of it?

Are they closing or just not being maintained?

Bum, only been the once but it was good fun! Hopefully something can be sorted to keep it going.

The complication factor, as always, is the liability issue when someone gets hurt. Anyone taking it on is going to need very good (expensive) public liability insurance. LCC, being a local authority have that in spades – any organisation that tries to step in is going to find that a very important issue to deal with.

That’s a shame, and a surprise.
My train of thought was that a cafe and centre was being constructed there, I must have missed that plug being pulled.

I wonder what the pro Tory mob on here will make of it?

They won’t read this, it’s in the bike forum.

And they won’t care because it’s “the North”

How would they close? Both (IIRC) are linked with public bridleways, and I’d imagine any fencing would be taken down in fairly short order.

Mark – Resident Grumpy
The complication factor, as always, is the liability issue when someone gets hurt. Anyone taking it on is going to need very good (expensive) public liability insurance. LCC, being a local authority have that in spades – any organisation that tries to step in is going to find that a very important issue to deal with.

How do other trail centres cover this? do the FC have liability insurance when I crack my knee on a tree at Cannock? Shirley it’s your ride, your fault, ride at your own peril.

To be physically closed or not to be maintained?

Philips Park in Prestwich/Whitefield hasn’t had any maintenance for years due to lack of council funding and the private organisation who have been threatening to take over doing nothing about it. It is worn in places but new lines have emerged.

I can’t see how they’ll physically close it short of digging it up, but that will cost money that they don’t have. However, if the council do withdraw funding that that will mean an end to organised events in there.

Mark makes a good point about insurance and who would want to take it on anyway? You can’t really put a fence round it and charge an entry fee and there are no car park or trail head facilities that can generate revenue.

Carry on as you were, but don’t complain when it gets worn out or the signage needs replacing.

The worrying thing is that its not just this, its everything. Mrs B works for the Lancashire Wildlife Trust. Believe me, this is the tip of the iceberg

The proposed cuts to Lancs County Council budgets over the next few years are so draconian, that pretty much all maintenance of parks and leisure facilities and is going to be cut beyond the bone, because they’ve been cut to the bone already. The government are banking on people like the Wildlife trust stepping in to take over. Except they haven’t the budgets for that.

Ultimately the governments aim is for Councils to be a core central agency, with few directly employed people, which then contracts out all its legally responsible services to its mates G4S, Serco and Centrica to make money out of by delivering the minimum service it can legally get away with.

***ing Tories know the price of everyhitng and the value of nothing.

****s!!!

The complication factor, as always, is the liability issue when someone gets hurt. Anyone taking it on is going to need very good (expensive) public liability insurance. LCC, being a local authority have that in spades – any organisation that tries to step in is going to find that a very important issue to deal with.

Public liability insurance and site management sorted, one large event and a couple of small ones should cover the costs.

B1KEPARKS

Bloody shame this. When I was there it felt like it needed a little investment, basically just signage and the like, but nothing major. And it seemed like such a success story. I wonder how much business it brought to the local area? I took a detour off the M6, bought a meal, petrol, went to the shops…

I’ve recently started working for the forestry commission and there is so little money, even now before the cuts coming next year, that I can’t see how there will be much maintenance or development of mtbing on fc land either. Sad times

As far as I understand very little has been spent on maintenance of the trails but that doesn’t mean nothing.

Lee Quarry is a “funny” as it’s an Urban Common, people ride there with permission of the landowner which can be removed. As it’s Urban Common it can’t be fenced (gets the ramblers really excited) but although bikes have been ridden there since the year dot there is no “right of access”. Cragg I don’t know the status but again had been ridden for years and has less “issues” than Lee

I imagine that the key issue is “duty of care” in that someone has to regularly check and maintain the trails as well as the aspect of having suitable insurance for a site which has numerous safety issues. As it’s the countryside service that’s getting the chop they are the people who check the site for LCC hence if they go the “higher risk” discretionary activities go too

doing the checks and maintenance could possibly be covered by a local group the issue is the insurance which probably will mean the insured entity would need to become a Company Limited by Guarantee and that there would be a significant running cost (insurance) before the rest of the bits and pieces that would be needed are accounted for. If the entity is created it needs it’s own insurance, once the underwriter does a google on Air/land ambulance visits to Lee Quarry I don’t imagine it will be cheap

The Trailhead is now a dead duck with significant issues (probably due to fraud and/or incompetence 10-20 years ago) that mean that the site will never be developed as hoped. So that means revenue generation is hard

One hope is that the wind farm extension could be tapped for cash as part of their community fund but that money is probably earmarked for other more fluffy stuff and will only last 20 years. There are some big quarrying companies in the area but little incentive for them to assist

My crystal ball is that neither site will be sold (who would have it, death trap with SSSI in it much of which is Urban Common). Cragg will be untouched and slowly destroyed by people on MX

Lee Quarry will have some features flattened/ accesses “changed” and still be ridden by some

My rescue plan would have to involve RBC, the creation of a trailhead in Futures Park building (ground floor of the council building) and a effort to create a sustainable volunteer group and funding stream to look after the place.

🙁 Had some brilliant times up at Lee and Cragg over the years. Hardly a surprise announcement, to be honest it looks like they abandoned the place ages ago, nothing’s been done to keep it up really and bits of it are getting very scratty now.

Thanks Dave, thanks Gideon!

Surely now that the trails exist, lack or maintenance will simply mean they evolve and change as they weather and wear, meaning they will end up as “wild” trails not much different from going out for a day in the hills, except concentrated in one small area? The challenge will increase as the trails become more broken and this ought to give users more satisfaction.

People whine about “sanitisation” of their favourite bridleways and byways so shouldn’t they welcome the prospect of their favourite trails reverting to “un-sanitised”?

Public liability insurance and site management sorted, one large event and a couple of small ones should cover the costs.
https://www.b1ke.com/b1keparks/

Events at Lee Quarry don’t make real money and even lose money. The site is challenging for any events based there as there is no building to base it out of and the weather can be poor and at anytime 20 horse riders might want to bimble through the site.

Also,
for XC: it’s seen as too tough by many, the numbers for Brownbacks were falling and the national hill climb champion used to win (he went fast down too)
for enduro: only a few viable lines
weekender: numbers dropping, costs high

Access control is nigh on impossible and “pay to ride” won’t work at Lee as there isn’t enough to ride to justify the £

globalti – Member

Surely now that the trails exist, lack or maintenance will simply mean they evolve and change as they weather and wear, meaning they will end up as “wild” trails not much different from going out for a day in the hills, except concentrated in one small area? The challenge will increase as the trails become more broken and this ought to give users more satisfaction.

People whine about “sanitisation” of their favourite bridleways and byways so shouldn’t they welcome the prospect of their favourite trails reverting to “un-sanitised”?

A lot of the people at Lee are the type who push their bike back up the hill, it’s the trail centre features they come for

Globalti – Cragg is a bit more like that. Its so remote, that you have to put it in as part of a loop anyway. I sometimes do it as part of my commute home 😀 Theres some great trails around it though. I can’t see it making any difference really

But Lee is a bit more Trail Centrey (if that makes sense). With people driving there, parking up, and seasoning it

Hopefully you are right gti, but half of the appeal of the quarries is the fantastic flow of some of the faster sections that will undoubtedly disappear with erosion. Like you say, it is concentrated in a very small area which was part of its appeal, but will cause it to erode much quicker.
Binners hits the proverbial nail here for me

***ing Tories know the price of everyhitng and the value of nothing

it’s seen as too tough by many, the numbers for Brownbacks were falling

Not sure you can justifiably link these two. It’s not tough, and the falling numbers at the BB events was not _just_ due to the trail difficulty – a lot of other reasons.

Just keep riding it. Public Common sounds like Open Access to me.

My 2p worth.

Philips Park will go the same way. Plenty of cash to build it and zero to look after it.

The Ranger Service in Bury have all been made redundant. Maintenance of leisure facilities is being pushed out to the groups that use them (bowling greens etc), but how do you generate money from a bike trail?

The easiest option for the council is to close it, withdrawer insurance and let nature take it back.

Aye everythign will close and we will do no more and noless than we have to

Folk will care only when it affects them rather than about the community in general

Shame as we are still one of the richest countries in the world and we can provide for our citizens basic needs as well as cultural and spiritual and sporting ones

None of the sites will be closed, they will be sold or disposed of through asset transfer. The key for sites like Lee and Cragg is to find an interested community group that can take on the trails. I understand the bigger liabilities would be kept by LCC through asset transfer (what this means I don’t know, rockfall rather than gravel rash?). So who ever takes over, as mentioned by Mark, Big n Daft and Harry the Spider, will take on the ‘duty of care’ which given that Lee Quarry pretty much has a guaranteed Air Ambulance reserved parking place, could be quite off putting for small community groups.
The Council cannot close the sites because they still would need people to check the sites. There will be no staff to check no sites

How much money was blown on the ‘art’ installations rather than being put into trust for ongoing / community maintenance?

Its pretty hard/impossible to get grants for repairs or maintenance of a project. Whoever takes it over will have to be very creative in their grant applications!

How much money was blown on the ‘art’ installations rather than being put into trust for ongoing / community maintenance?

part of the “Valley of Stone” Project, lottery funded, paid for a lot of third sector “management”

Not sure you can justifiably link these two. It’s not tough, and the falling numbers at the BB events was not _just_ due to the trail difficulty – a lot of other reasons.

like what? other XC going out of fashion? the first race hospitalised 4 people including Jenn (Scaphoid fracture). The main guy was a complete knob but the rest of the team carried it.

Just keep riding it. Public Common sounds like Open Access to me.

no it’s not. Some users/user groups will try and push MTB out as they lost the amenity of the site when MTB developed

Its pretty hard/impossible to get grants for repairs or maintenance of a project. Whoever takes it over will have to be very creative in their grant applications!

you go “commercial” do activities to raise money to pay for the maintenance. Maintenance is part of the overhead for the facility central to the activity and impose a pseudo user charge.

this news does not surprise me nor does what is happening at LCC/RBC surprise me

i was involved in the original big lottery bid to secure funding as an “adrenalin hub”
that plan fell short of the longlist and it was partly to do with RBC not really wanting to get involved at that stage and the plan itself being a tad ambitious
once they had actually secured further funding t do the work that resembles the quarry today, i think LCC were a bit short sighted in their approach in allowing RBC to be involved in the maintenance plan…its not the first time RBC have said yes build it and we will maintain it…they did the same to a £30k bmx track i secured funding to and had built in crawshawbooth. as soon as that was built they refused to maintain it even though they had been given the maintenance funds from our funding pot.
i read there were plans to join the 2 quarries up to a larger cycle network, there were also plans to get Ride On involved and for them to open up a shop and trailhead centre but due to the amount of toxic crap found in the soil, the feasibility study put a stop to that.
IMO RBC are one of the major reasons the quarry will close to bikers

The lifeline here could well be the suggested alternative of it being handed over to a trust – in fact it could well offer the freedom the whole thing has always needed.

Rossendale leisure trust isn’t a panacea

In the same way as the drove roads, towpaths, packhorse trails and quarry roads that once flourished for economic reasons, mountain bike trails will slowly fade back into the landscape and because they are mostly well built, those that don’t become overgrown will become another historic curiosity available for people to walk, run, or ride bikes or horses along.

If it was as easy as many of you make it sound for a local community group to manage a viable trail centre / MTB facility like this without a wodge of state funding, wouldn’t there be a load of ones that you could point to as a model to follow here? Examples??

As a few have said, if nothing else is I reckon public liability insurance is the showstopper here.

if nothing else is I reckon the cost of public liability insurance and the maintenance is the showstopper here.

It’s all about the money