March 2018 - Friends of Brockwell Park

Join us for an early start on 15 April in beautiful Brockwell Park for a guided walk, led by RSPB Central London Group. At 6am, we will walk round part of the park to see what birds are about and listen to their songs and calls. We expect to hear song and mistle thrushes, blackbirds, robins, goldfinches, greenfinches, chaffinches, great tits and blue tits, to name a few. Other possibilities include great spotted woodpecker, nuthatch and blackcap. We’ll also see several species of water birds at the ponds.

Birds: it’s worth sacrificing a bit of sleep to see them.

We have been given permission to enter the park before it opens to the public, and there should be a special peaceful atmosphere at this time. We will start the walk at 6am and we expect it to last for one and a half to two hours. (A nearby cafe opens at 8am if anyone fancies a well-earned coffee!)

The leaders of the walk will be Czech Conroy and Graeme Hutchinson, two members of this RSPB group’s Executive Committee. They both live locally.

Buses 3, 196, 68, 468 and 37 all stop nearby. If coming by car, you’ll probably have to park in a side street nearby.

Meet at the Herne Hill Gate entrance to the park on 15 April at 6am. This gate will be opened temporarily just for this walk. However, please note that the other park gates will be shut until the normal opening time of 6.30am. The event is free although donations to the park are always welcome. Do bring a pair of binoculars if you possess them.

Please read below the Friends’ official objections to the proposed Field Day event this summer. We submitted these on 5 March 2018.

Background

The Friends of Brockwell Park is a membership charity that has been in existence for more than 30 years. We have reached our views on Field Day 2018 on the basis of regular surveys of our members and local people, which we will happily supply the licensing committee with.

General comments

A gated event this size has never been held before in Brockwell Park. Crucial pieces of information, like the event’s impact on the park’s ecology and wildlife, or reports on the safe handling of the huge crowds involved, are missing. We believe the Licensing Committee should therefore err on the side of caution and ideally postpone this event until 2019, to give time for all the relevant reports to be prepared and considered by experts and the community. If the committee is minded to approve the 2018 application, its worst impacts—large numbers, excessive noise levels and 12-hour opening—should be mitigated carefully.

Length of licence

It is not clear whether Field Day and Mighty Hoopla is applying for a one- or two-year licence. FoBP’s view is that it should be only for one year and any renewal be subject to detailed review of the 2018 event, if permission is granted for it.

1. The prevention of crime and disorder

Past experience indicates a high incidence of drug-dealing, drug-taking and high alcohol intake. At past events, this has been related to very noisy, disorderly behaviour over many hours as clients leave the venue; while police had to be called to Sunfall 2017 to deal with fighting in the queue to get in. Drug pushing is a crime which occupies the police enough already; a gathering of this size for this projected time will only encourage more criminals into the Park and, of major concern to local residents, its environs. In Victora Park, where Field Day had been for a decade, crime figures rose significantly for the month in which Field Day took place.

2. Public safety

Public safety may be jeopardised greatly by the exit strategy of the event organisers: the only exit from the site is through the Brixton Water Lane gates. We have seen no credible report from the organisers explaining how they will arrange the safe exit of 39,999 people. The Fire Department, in the Proforma, requires a gateway width of 4.8 metres minimum; the Brixton Water Lane exit, with both gates open, measures 3.76m. FOBP is deeply concerned that too many people going through too narrow an exit at the last moment is an accident waiting to happen. The risk of injury among a surging mass of people, many not in full control of themselves due to drugs and/or alcohol, all trying, perhaps impatiently to squeeze through the narrow exit, must be high.

There is provision by the Event organisers for a fire exit at the Herne Hill entrance to the Park. Given such a designation, the Fire Department will probably refuse to allow its use as a public client exit. This view is supported by the rumour that Herne Hill station is going to be closed. The narrow Brixton Water Lane exit is a dangerous bottle-neck quite unsuited to safely handling 39,999 people.

Each event day will have the higher Sound Levels of 75 dba and 90 dbc

3. Preventing public nuisance

We are wholly opposed to holding any event on Friday 1 June, as the proposed noise levels from 11am to 11.30pm will adversely affect employees in offices surrounding the park, such as the 200+ employees at Mark Allen Group on Dulwich Road.

It will also seriously disturb local students preparing for the public exams they are due to sit from 4 June onwards.

FOBP is opposed to the prolonged opening hours on all three days—12.5 hours on Friday and Saturday and 12 hours on Sunday—and suggests that the limits normal for the annual Lambeth Country Show—midday to 8pm—should be adhered to.

Each event day will have the higher Sound Levels of 75 dba and 90 dbc; this sound level has a deleterious impact for miles around, but particularly for the many residents who live cheek by jowl with Brockwell Park around its whole perimeter. We have conducted surveys of our members and local residents and the overwhelming majority have told the FOBP that these sound levels at the Sunfall events in 2016 and 2017 were intolerable.

FOBP is very concerned at the lack of transparency about the crowd-handling measures needed for such a huge event; we have seen no report on this. Previous experience of smaller events in Brockwell Park (e.g. Sunfall) has shown that this process is prolonged, chaotic, rowdy, noisy, and very disruptive and unpleasant for local residents (e.g. reports of clients defaecating in residents’ gardens in Brixton Water Lane, and offering them drugs); and going on with loud conversation into the early hours of the morning. How much worse will these features be if the anticipated numbers of 39,999 or so clients are all trying to leave the Park through the Brixton Water Lane exit, as is planned?

Features of both Sunfall events were: noise at all hours; unruly behaviour, massive litter in streets and gardens; massive congestion of public routes, impeding use by residents going about their normal business; and general denial of local residents’ accustomed amenities. There was damage to trees, to donated benches and to the beloved miniature railway. To mitigate these deleterious effect, we believe numbers well short of 20,000, say around 10,000, should be licensed as suitable for this small park.

Even if the weather is fine, the damage to the park infrastructure by 39,999 people for three days running will be tremendous; if the weather is adverse, it will be an ecological disaster. Given that neither we nor the committee can predict the weather, we therefore again urge caution and suggest that the numbers permitted be reduced significantly.

If the committee is minded to approve the 2018 application, it should only be on the basis that the organiser’s crowd-handling and public order/security measures are adequate for this large event in this small park.

4. The protection of children from harm

It is impossible to guarantee the safety of children in the face of the above overall picture.

The serious harm to even one child would be one incident too many. Some local residents will inevitably take their children to the Park at the time of the event, with thousands of extra visitors crowding them in. If, as is reasonable to assume, the level of drug taking in Brockwell Park increases dramatically, children may step on needles, perhaps contaminated with HIV, or the shards of broken nitrous oxide containers, which were everywhere after the Sunfall events. Inevitably, children will be put in harm’s way.

Month: March 2018

Voicing our ‘redlines’ about Field Day

Hear the dawn chorus in Brockwell Park

Volunteers needed for March 27 hedge-laying duties

Donate to Beauty Banks at the Lido

FoBP Licensing Objections to Field Day 2018