Why the Wirral Egg Run had to move into the 21st century . . .
ON behalf of the team that organised this year's Wirral Egg Run I would like to offer the following observations following publication of the anonymous letter (Egg Run's loss of emphasis a sad state of affairs', Mailbox, April 23).
The Egg Run has never had a stronger emphasis on helping our sick kids than it did this year and will have in the coming years.
Our motto of It's all for the kids' was born out of a debate in October of last year about how to ensure that 100% of the donations made by public and riders go directly to Arrowe Park Hospital's Jellybean Kids Appeal - and not to cover our overheads.
Staging the Run is an expensive business - £10m public liability insurance, police costs, licensing, printing, high visibility wear, street signs . . . the list is long.
This year, for the first time ever, we covered all of the costs before the Run took place, through sponsorship and advertising from local companies, support from Wirral Council and merchandising, as well as personal funding.
We know that there are those who simply wish to give an Easter egg and that is fine. Last year (2007), a registration' charge of £1 was levied on all riders (in the event it could not be done consistently and had to be abandoned), so anyone who just wanted to give an Easter egg still had to give money.
This year, because of the way we were organised after consultation with the police and council, we did not need a registration charge. Anyone who wanted to give an egg and not donate to Jellybean could do so easily and without any hassle.
We live in an age of ever tighter health and safety regulations. To get the support of the police and council we have to plan the event carefully - our plan is over 60 pages thick. We worked closely for five months with all of the authorities to make the Wirral Egg Run a gold standard event - it is now classed by the police and council as a role model for major event organisers.
Our contract with the police stipulates that it is our responsibility to stage a safe event for the public. Changes in the corporate manslaughter laws this year will make the safety-focussed organising of such events even more of a priority. We have two professionally qualified safety advisors in our team to help guide us in these matters. On the day of the event, they have authority over everyone, myself included.
We are a limited company and specifically a not-for-profit organisation with no shares. There are four directors and no-one receives any kind of pay or remuneration at all. To-date we have paid all of our own expenses.
As a company, we will have to publish accounts and an annual report - anyone and everyone will be able to see where the money comes from and where it goes to.
We are publishing full company information, including details of the directors and the rest of our team, on our website - wirraleggrun.org
Our safety, legal and accounting advisors all tell us that a limited company is the best way to protect everyone involved.
For the Egg Run to survive and thrive, it must move into the 21st century and can no longer be the kind of informal gathering it used to be.
Our challenge is to maintain the spirit of the Run while satisfying every health and safety regulation and minimising disruption to the public.
This year we almost doubled the number of riders and eggs donated compared with 2007, and that in turn was almost double compared with the unofficial Runs of 2005-6. Unofficial' in this context means "without the support of the police or council" - it all got rather confrontational, but those days are behind us now.
We expect that we will also double our donation to Jellybean this year. And we had the full support of the police, council, Mayor, MP, Foundation Trust and the public.
In 2009, we want to generate even more for our sick kids. We feel that we all have a collective responsibility to do as much as we can to help them.
I have said elsewhere that we do not need to know each other to help each other - that is why 7,000 bikes with maybe 10,000 people travelled from far and wide to Wirral to show unity for such a worthwhile cause.
All we ask is that those who cannot or do not wish to take part either allow us to do so and have a great day out or, even better, join in and help us help our sick kids.
You don't need to be a biker to help out - drop us a line at either my email or any of the team's email addresses on our website?
Ian Kendrick,
Chairman,
Wirral Egg Run
(address supplied)
1:45pm Tuesday 6th May 2008
Print 
Email this 
Comment
What are these links for?
If you liked this article and would like to share it with others on the web who might be searching for good content we've made it easy for you to do it.
At the bottom of all articles, you'll see links to six sites. These sites - commonly called 'social bookmark' or 'social news' sites - have large communities of web users who share and rate interesting, useful and fun things on the web.
Clicking the links will automatically add the address of the story you are reading to one of these sites, letting you share it with others. Each site will ask you to register to share stories. Registration is free and once a member, you can store, recommend and search for stories that interest you.
More on Digg
More on del.icio.us
More on Furl
More on reddit
More on NowPublic/
More on Yahoo!
