BRADFORD's six official parkrun events will not resume on June 5 despite Bradford Council giving the green light for them to go ahead once again.

The delay comes as parkrun UK has announced less than half of its events in the country have been given permission by landowners to restart, prompting it to call off its planned resumption date.

The free 5k Saturday morning events attract hundreds of runners every week and have been sorely missed as a source of exercise and socialising throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.

parkruns are held at Bowling Park, Horton Park, Lister Park, Roberts Park (which also hosts a Junior parkrun), Myrtle Park and Cliffe Castle.

Also in the area, Skipton, Chevin Forest (Otley), and Brighouse parkruns all have permission to go ahead, but the event at Kirklees Council-owned Oakwell Hall in Birstall has not been permitted to go ahead as yet.

parkrun UK said more than 250 events have been given permission to restart, but it falls "far short of the critical mass needed to prevent overwhelming those that have been given the go ahead".

A number of councils and landowners have either blocked their property being used for the events or not responded to parkrun's requests.

The organisation, which has more than three million members, has now been forced to move its planned return date to Saturday, June 26, with a decision on this date to be made on June 11.

Nick Pearson, parkrun global chief executive, said: “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.”