{"id":864807,"date":"2026-04-01T12:11:24","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T12:11:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/864807\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T12:11:24","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T12:11:24","slug":"chelmsford-meetings-abandoned-as-bha-denies-licence-to-new-company","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/864807\/","title":{"rendered":"Chelmsford Meetings Abandoned as BHA Denies Licence to New Company\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Chelmsford-City_PRINT_Chelmsford-City.jpg\" class=\"img-responsive\" alt=\"\"\/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Chelmsford meetings for this Thursday and Friday have been cancelled<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Racing has been abandoned at Chelmsford City Racecourse on Thursday and Friday following a decision by the board of the British Horseracing Authority (BHA) not to grant a licence to Golden Mile Racing Limited (GMRL). The latter is the name of a new company formed to operate Chelmsford City Racecourse (CCR) in place of the previous licence holder Great Leighs Estates Limited (GLEL), which has been placed in administration.<\/p>\n<p>Declarations were taken on Wednesday morning by Weatherbys for Chelmsford&#8217;s Good Friday meeting, which was advertised as being worth a total of \u00a3251,000. Two hours later the BHA released its decision, stating its \u201creasons for this decision are confidential\u201d. No future fixtures will be run at the Essex track pending the outcome of a potential appeal.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0This followed a preliminary decision made by the BHA board at the weekend. GMRL has then allowed to make oral and written representations to the board on 31 March.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n    &#13;<br \/>\n    &#13;<\/p>\n<p>The BHA&#8217;s statement released just after noon on Thursday stated, \u201cHaving considered the matter carefully and taken full account of the points raised, the board&#8217;s position remained that it did not consider it appropriate to grant a racecourse licence for CCR to GMRL.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0\u201cThe Board&#8217;s decision means GMRL is not licensed to stage any fixtures, pending the outcome of any appeal.\u00a0 This means that regrettably no further fixtures will be staged at CCR pending the outcome of any appeal process. This includes the fixtures on 2 April, 3 April and 9 April.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0\u201cIn accordance with the Rules of Racing, GMRL may appeal the board&#8217;s decision to the independent Licensing Committee (Rule (B)19).\u00a0 A request for permission to appeal must be made to the Judicial Panel Executive within 21 days of receipt of the decision being challenged (Judicial Panels Code, paragraph 105).\u00a0 The 21-day time period starts from the date GMRL receives the written reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The licence held by GLEL expired on March 31, with the most recent meeting held at the track on March 26 having been given permission to go ahead with the agreement of the administrator. The April 2 and 3 fixtures will not be rescheduled.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The statement continued, \u201cPlans for future fixtures, including 9 April, will be announced in due course.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0\u201cThe BHA has worked tirelessly with stakeholders to deliver this week&#8217;s fixtures. It is regrettable they have been cancelled at such short notice. We recognise this will impact participants \u2013 especially trainers, staff and jockeys \u2013 as well as racegoers.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/visitor.r20.constantcontact.com\/manage\/optin?v=001emHU8ZhrsEajJ7wAchg-Q0BVk4IZqcgudN44sPgrKIw215QhAC5sOZpiX2mrUIPZV0h_h2A4HEEvukxvIEvpdYgT6ykDs9chd4YAtYY2nZzhd0K6eEyx2zOnhVYTOI5e5sP3SaMDOnutKM6JHYKayGwukK-TLM2vL2HpHR34Q_n7wQDJg1T7y03OUFUnvNn_vWUsgwpBZ_I%3D\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"color: #D3132F;\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><strong>Not a subscriber? Click here to sign up for the daily PDF or alerts.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thoroughbreddailynews.com\/chelmsford-meetings-abandoned-as-bha-denies-licence-to-new-company\/\" id=\"copyLink\" onclick=\"copyToClipboard(event)\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Copy Article Link<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"post-tags\">\n              This story was posted in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thoroughbreddailynews.com\/category\/europe\/\" rel=\"category tag nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Europe<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thoroughbreddailynews.com\/category\/shared-news-europe\/\" rel=\"category tag nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Shared News Europe<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thoroughbreddailynews.com\/category\/news-europe\/\" rel=\"category tag nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Top News Europe<\/a> and tagged <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thoroughbreddailynews.com\/tag\/bha\/\" rel=\"tag nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">BHA<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thoroughbreddailynews.com\/tag\/chelmsford-city-racecourse\/\" rel=\"tag nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Chelmsford City Racecourse<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thoroughbreddailynews.com\/tag\/great-leighs\/\" rel=\"tag nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Great Leighs<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thoroughbreddailynews.com\/tag\/licence\/\" rel=\"tag nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">licence<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thoroughbreddailynews.com\/tag\/racing-abandoned\/\" rel=\"tag nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">racing abandoned<\/a>.            <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chelmsford meetings for this Thursday and Friday have been cancelled Racing has been abandoned at Chelmsford City Racecourse&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":864808,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4107],"tags":[80265,245914,245915,288,145445,1071,245916,79,16,15],"class_list":["post-864807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-racing","tag-bha","tag-chelmsford-city-racecourse","tag-great-leighs","tag-horse-racing","tag-licence","tag-racing","tag-racing-abandoned","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116329387919144490","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=864807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864807\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/864808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=864807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=864807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=864807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}