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Croydon loses out in the long run with just 21 marathon grants

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This year’s London Marathon on Sunday will be celebrating the event having distributed more than £100million to good causes over the last 42 years. Yet Croydon has the worst record of all London boroughs in applying for grants, as STEVEN DOWNES reports

Marathon fund-raiser: Croydon has been left trailing when it comes to accessing charity grants

Just days before the staging of the 43rd London Marathon, back on its regular Blackheath to Westminster course and back to its regular spring-time date, the organisers have flourished the fact that they have managed to award an astonishing £100million to various good causes in and around the capital.

And Inside Croydon has discovered that the borough which has received the fewest number of grants from the London Marathon’s charitable foundation is… Croydon.

In the 42 years since that first London Marathon, just 21 sports and recreational projects in Croydon have successfully submitted bids for funding. Two of those 21 projects were handed their grants only in the latest round of awards, announced last week.

Croydon’s failure to tap into the London Marathon’s rich vein of sports funding reflects the local authority’s failure to organise a professional bid team in Fisher’s Folly to assist the borough’s sports clubs and community associations to access such readily available cash.

And goodness knows, Croydon’s sports venues, parks and open spaces need all the help they can get at the moment – and it certainly won’t be coming from the cash-strapped council.

Hideous: the ugliest logo in the event’s 42-year history

It is estimated that there is at least £1billion available each year to community and volunteer-led arts and sports organisations from a range of sources, including the various funds administering National Lottery cash, charities like the Jack Petchey Foundation, and the London Marathon. Their grants might be used towards the costs of putting a new roof on the bowls clubhouse, to funding coaching for disabled athletes, to building new park equipment to encourage active play.

But many grassroots sports clubs and community groups need advice and support in identifying where that funding can be accessed and in successfully applying for it. Croydon Council has rarely offered such support, certainly not been pro-active in providing it, and in so doing has denied its residents multiple opportunities to up-grade local facilities.

The grant dispersal figures from the London Marathon illustrate the point.

Compared to Croydon’s 21 grants in 42 years…

The borough which had had the most successful grant applications to the London Marathon is Tower Hamlets, with 105, worth a total of £4,278,285.

That’s £4.3million over 40 years that has not had to be found out of that borough’s Council Tax, providing sports facilities that residents might otherwise never have had.

The borough which has received the largest amount of grant aid from the London Marathon since 1981 is Newham, with £8,824,049, from 65 applications.

Close finish: Dick Beardsley leads Inge Simonsen at the end of the first, 1981 London Marathon. It would finish in a historic dead heat

Originally, when the marathon’s founders, Chris Brasher and John Disley, set up the not-for-profit status for their money-spinning event, the intention was to share the cash mostly with those local authorities on whose roads the marathon was staged each year. So inner London boroughs like Newham, Tower Hamlets, Lambeth and Southwark initially will have done better than outer London boroughs such as Croydon.

But Merton – with more than double the successful grant applications than Croydon – has never been an inner London borough, nor on the race route.

In any case, as the London Marathon operation has grown over the decades to include other events, such as RideLondon, the annual mass bike ride, the scope for handing out charity cash has spread, too.

Thus the London Marathon Foundation has paid 93 grant applications from organisations in leafy, and relatively wealthy, Surrey, worth a total of £4,942,511.

Over the same period, good causes in Croydon have received a comparatively modest £1,413,459 from the same source.

Brasher and Disley’s original objectives, when they were trying to woo the then Tory leader of the GLC, Sir Horace Cutler, into closing the capital’s roads for one Sunday morning a year, was expressed as, “To show the world that, on occasions, humanity can be united.”

The former Olympic medalists (Brasher won gold in the steeplechase at the 1956 Melbourne Games, after having, in 1954, helped to pace Roger Bannister to the first sub-four-minute mile) also said that they wanted, “To inspire more people to take up sport.” Which they certainly achieved – 40,000 are expected once again to take on the 26 miles and 385 yards through the streets of London this Sunday morning.

They also said that they wanted “to improve the overall standard and status of British distance running”, which, with a couple of notable exceptions, has probably not happened as they will have wanted.

And they also said that they wanted, “To maximise revenue for charities.” In which the event they founded has undoubtedly exceeded what they might have ever imagined.

Marathon man: Chris Brasher. Note the ‘cutting edge’ phone of 1985

Last year, the London Marathon Foundation launched an Active Spaces Fund, from which they have already distributed £2.4million “to improve and create places, spaces and facilities in London to support children, young people and marginalised groups and communities to lead active and healthy lives”.

A total of 81 projects have been funded across 26 London boroughs, including the latest two from Croydon.

Croydon Voluntary Action – notably a council-linked organisation with experience of making funding bids – got £47,000 towards converting an old retail unit (we’ve got plenty of those) into “a new space with a range of activities from table tennis to dance and towards staffing costs of a ‘Community Builder’ to run the activities”.

And an organisation called Reaching Higher has received £15,200 to “deliver free, mentoring-based sports sessions for marginalised young people in Croydon”.

Which is all good and lovely.

According to the London Marathon Foundation, their “monumental milestone” of distributing £100million in total has, since 1981, helped the following:

Nick Bitel, who was Brasher’s lawyer for many years and is now the CEO of London Marathon Events, said: “Chris and John’s legacy is extraordinary and I don’t think they ever imagined that the event they created back in 1981 would have gone on to inspire so many millions to get active, sowed the seeds for our current portfolio of events and enabled the London Marathon Foundation to make grants totalling £100million, and counting.

“As always, we will be thinking of our founders on Marathon Day next Sunday.”

And perhaps someone in Fisher’s Folly will be thinking about how to invest in support for residents so that Croydon’s sports clubs, residents’ associations and park friends groups can better access London Marathon grants than has ever been the case in the past.


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