POWER boaters face a race against time to switch Coniston records week to Windermere this winter after running into a wave of red tape.

Changes at the top of governing power boat racing events in Great Britain have left the 2010 bylaws for Coniston Water ‘not fit for purpose,’ a meeting heard.

The stalemate has blocked the event taking place in October this year on the water made famous by speed record breaker Donald Campbell CBE.

Instead, organisers have lodged an application with the Lake District National Park Authority to host a scaled-down ‘endurance records event’ on Windermere on November 9-10.

But that also requires an exemption of the 10mph speed limit and the formal process – said to take 12 weeks – is currently out to consultation.

Concerns are growing that the clock is ticking with just three months to go before the event is due to take place.

Organisers Coniston Power Boat Records Week have already conceded that it may not happen in 2019 and are preparing for the fact the 49th year of the event may have to be a ‘lay’ year.

Cllr Chris Hogg, a member of the national park authority, has raised concerns at the Lake District National Park Authority that the area could risk losing the event to another area.

“What I would hate to see is the event not happen locally this year because of these technical issues and all of a sudden another area picking up this event and them saying ‘we can host it here from now on,” said Cllr Hogg, SLDC’s Liberal Democrat representative on the LDNPA.

The bureaucracy also earned a stern rebuke from Coniston councillor Anne Hall.

“All this should have taken was to change the bylaw to include the name of the organisation that quantifies powerboat records – job done,” said Cllr Hall, a former long-standing member of the Lake District National Park Authority.

While recognising the authority was obliged to follow a formal process to allow the event to happen on Windermere, she said those who created the rules risked ‘destroying’ the hard work people put in to stage such events.

Records week – usually held in October – is an important late-season boost for the tourism industry before Christmas, she said.

Hotels and cafes in Coniston benefit from an influx of competitors and spectators, who often fill up local caravan sites.

National park member Mark Kidd told a discussion at Murley Moss that the park’s world heritage status may also cause a re-think in attitudes towards racing on water.

Mr Kidd, chairman of Staveley Parish Council, said: “There is an argument to say that a world heritage site isn’t the place for noisy powerboats.

“However, this is part of the culture of Coniston and part of our modern heritage. I fully support changing the bylaws.”

Park member Mike Carter, of Skelwith Bridge, said he supported records week taking place on Coniston.

But he warned that any amendments to Coniston’s bylaws could open the lake up to applications for ‘all sorts of other’ power events, which presented a ‘reputational risk’ to the national park.

Windermere was suggested as the fall-back position this year because the bylaws governing powerboating events on England’s longest lake are less prescriptive than Coniston.

Steve Ratcliffe, the national park authority’s director of sustainable development at the LDNPA, said that he was ‘comfortable as I can be,’ that the pressing timetable was understood by all those involved in the process.

Mr Ratcliffe said the park fully supported permitting world and national speed records on both Coniston and Windermere – ‘subject to protections’.

He said the wording of Coniston’s bylaw would be changed to allow ‘more flexibility’ for water speed records to take place.

It would also ‘future-proof’ records week to guard against any further changes in the governing bodies in charge of powerboat racing, said Mr Ratcliffe.

Mark Eccles, the LDNPA’s head of park management, also stressed that it was important that any updated bylaw for Coniston left room for the possible return to Coniston Water of Bluebird K7.

The craft is a restored version of the one in which Campbell lost his life during a high-speed world record attempt in January 1967.

Mr Eccles said: “That boat has been tested elsewhere and I think the community feels quite bad about that.” He said it was ‘important’ that  Bluebird is given the chance to be ‘displayed and demonstrated on Coniston’.

The Coniston Water bylaws were originally drawn-up in 1975 and updated in 2010. They permit racers to take part in records week by providing an exemption to the 10mph speed limit.

The sticking point is that the bylaws state that the Royal Yachting Association – as the national authority for power boat racing and records attempts – sets the rules and determines records set at the event.

However, on January 1 this year, the RYA officially withdrew from any involvement in power boating.

It followed a decision taken last August by its board, which ruled that the ‘financial, safety and reputational challenges’ of being involved was ‘disproportionate to the number of clubs and competitors now actively racing’.

It said in a statement: “The board considers that it is no longer in the best interests of the RYA’s membership as a whole to continue to act as the governing body.”

Instead, its responsibilities have now passed to the British Power Boat Association, which is the new national authority of powerboat racing across Great Britain.

Subsequently, it has left the Coniston Water bylaw out of date. The bylaw amendment process involves an informal consultation, an application to the Secretary of State and then a formal consultation.

National park authority bosses would then make a recommendation to members, although is not expected until much later this year or early 2020.

A meeting of the authority was told that any amended bylaw could cost up to £10,000 in officer time and may even spark a public inquiry.

Organisers Coniston Powerboat Records Week has said it would mean a ‘hefty financial cost’ and it plans fundraising events to meet the costs it faces.

A park authority spokesman said: “The process for determining speed limit exemptions by the authority on Windermere takes up to 12 weeks from receiving a valid application.

“Applications for exemptions are subject to a consultation process. The feedback from such consultees is part of the determination. If there are justifiable grounds to reject an application that outweigh the positive aspects of the application then an application could be rejected. It could also be approved but with conditions that mitigate any concern or objection raised through consultation.”

The British Power Boat Association said it is ‘fully supportive’ of continuing water speed record breaking in the Lake District.

It said: “We have been working closely with the records week committee and the national park authority to amend the existing bylaw relating to Coniston.

“Both records week on Coniston and the proposed event on Windermere not only boosts the local economy outside of the core season, but also showcase the Lake District to a worldwide audience”