Organisers reluctantly abandon plans to stage the June 5 comeback of the popular series of 5km events

The long-awaited return of parkrun on June 5 has been postponed until June 26 at the earliest because not enough landowners and local councils had given the green light for events to take place on their patch.

When the pandemic broke out the popular series of 5km events were stopped in March last year. There was an attempt to resume in the autumn of 2020 but it was scuppered by a rise in coronavirus cases.

During the winter parkrunners have been increasingly keen to get back into action with growing evidence showing that outdoor fitness barely has an impact on the spread of the disease, but nervous landowners and councils have not been keen to allow events to start up again.

June 5 was the planned date for parkrun to re-start but with only around half of the nationwide events being currently allowed to take place, it means parkrun organisers have reluctantly put plans on hold for a further three weeks.

They will now make a decision on June 11 over whether they can start up again on June 26. The fear is that if only some parkruns resume then too many people will flood on to them from nearby events that have not yet re-started.

READ MORE: 10 training sessions for parkrun return

At present 287 parkruns have permission to start again on June 26 but discussions are ongoing with a further 287, whereas there are 14 other events where parkrun has not heard from the landowner.

This is despite a growing campaign to resume parkrun with World Athletics president Seb Coe and the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan leading the way. Meanwhile pubs, restaurants and other indoor hospitality has been allowed to re-start.

I'm calling on decision makers at every level to support the return of @parkrunUK in England. We should be proud of how @parkrunUK has helped make the world healthier & happier. It is now time to ensure it has a future. We must act to save this great health & wellbeing charity. pic.twitter.com/jYmB7Nh8tg

— Seb Coe (@sebcoe) May 19, 2021

“There has been an inevitability about this delay,” said parkrun chief executive Nick Pearson. “Press interest in recent days has helped close the gap (in the number of parkruns that need to get the green light) but the gap was too big to close in such a short period of time.”

Around 80-90% of events need to be given the go-ahead before parkrun will feel comfortable allowing all its events to resume.

In a statement, parkrun said: “With more than three million registered parkrunners across England, and around 300,000 people taking part on a typical weekend, opening a small subset of parkruns is not viable.”

Pearson added: “We will continue to work hard with landowners over the coming weeks to secure the permissions needed to return at the end of June. We are incredibly grateful to all of the landowners who have granted events permission to return so far, and for the groundswell of support for parkrun over recent days.

“Although it is disappointing not to be able to return on June 5, we are still optimistic that we can return parkrun events to nearly 600 communities across England very soon. We will do everything we can to ensure events restart on June 26.”