18 September 2024
Temporary closure explained
We are sad to announce the closure of the Royal Harbour Track with immediate effect on health and safety grounds.
This decision was made by the school and is supported by Thanet District Council. It has been made due to the poor state of the running surface and the failure of multiple floodlights. It also affects Thanet Athletics Club, East Kent Coaching and the school students themselves. It will mean Thursday night track sessions are cancelled until the situation gets resolved.
There are discussions ongoing between the school, TDC and KCC concerning liability to pay for the repairs. It’s a complex issue as the school has been through multiple name and ownership changes since the track was built and there are historic legal agreements in place. We will be kept informed of the outcome of these. To give you an idea, we are talking about £70k of repairs for the lights and the surface (the bulk of this is for the lights)
In the interim we have a few options as a club:
1. Do nothing. Wait until next Spring when the surface will be repaired and we don’t need the lights.
2. Shift the track session to a Saturday morning once the surface is repaired providing we have enough coaches/leaders to take the session and enough members wanting to take part.
3. Move the intervals to an alternate location starting at the same time such as Government Acre (The Lookout Cafe) in Ramsgate (those older members will remember we used to do interval sessions here before the track was built)
We are exploring all of these options and, being honest, none of them are as good as carrying on the sessions on a Thursday night at the track. Regrettably, this isn’t currently an option.
We will keep you posted on developments. We will obviously need to risk assess any new venue / location identified to make sure we can keep you all safe.
Andy, Men’s Captain.