BROCKWELL PARK JUNE 2024
Is this responsible stewardship of a treasured, ecologically fragile community resource, critical to the mental and physical health and wellbeing of that community?
Is this the park the Council feels is acceptable to hand back to that community for the rest of their summer after authorising the equivalent of 200,000 people jumping up and down continuously on its grassed areas for periods of around 9 hours, despite clearly soaking ground conditions, making the disastrous damage entirely inevitable?
The heart of the park is a fenced-off wasteland that has patently no prospect of meaningful restoration this summer, although we are generously invited back onto the bare ground immediately after it has been resown, an offer with a political rather than an ecological origin, I would estimate. Perhaps by next summer there may be the beginnings of the patient’s real recovery, just in time for a further 200,000 stamping feet to be unleashed onto it?
Lambeth, please advise.
Huge bare patch gouges are in addition to be found all over the park.
Once again this year, users are left with a disfigured, limited remnant of the park that plays such an important part in the maintenance of their mental and physical wellbeing.
What too is the long-term damage?
Friends of Brockwell Park’s longstanding position has been to oppose the siting of walled commercial events in the park. Nevertheless, in an attempt to find a compromise solution that took account of the Council’s fundraising needs, the Friends agreed not to oppose the ‘sealed envelope’ of walled events in May, with the aim of leaving park users free to enjoy their park undisturbed for the rest of the summer.
This arrangement has been shown not to work. Noone disputes the social importance of festivals or the need governments have foisted on Councils to raise finance. Neither of these, however, can be said to be satisfactorily addressed by a policy that results in huge damage to a resource that is also critical to the daily health and welfare of the community.
Until such time as a proposal is brought forward from the Council that guarantees the community full and undisturbed use of an undamaged park for the unchallenged majority of the summer, the Friends return to their opposition to any walled commercial event in Brockwell Park.
Members are informed of a petition against commercial events in the park started by Jenny Hawkins, and which now has 1600 signatories. By googling ‘Brockwell Park Events Petition’, a Brixton Buzz story will be brought up that provides a link direct to the petition.
Shortly, FOBP will issue its own survey to gauge in detail local reaction to events.
Michael Boyle, on behalf of the FOBP Committee
