Some 44 trees in Brockwell Park are due to be felled or substantially reduced. Each has a notice about the works. Lambeth chose to initiate this process without any consultation or proper advanced notice.
The Friends of Brockwell Park (FOBP) has two experienced tree volunteers who guide the committee on tree policy. FOBP believes Lambeth’s Tree Team has made correct decisions about the necessary work.
Normally, such works are banned during the bird nesting season. It is unclear why Lambeth has chosen to ignore this requirement or whether it will be breaking the law.
Normally, a programme such as this would be implemented over a number of months. Lambeth is accelerating the works because more than 30,000 people a day are expected at this summer’s major events. The FOBP has always opposed large events in the park and especially those taking place behind high fencing. These events damage the park and restrict access to local people and children, many of whom depend on Brockwell Park for its open green space.
On balance, the decisions about the scope of works to each affected tree appear to be sound. However, the timing is unfortunate. Lambeth has created alarm and significant concern by its lack of consultation and lack of advance communication. Some local people say every tree should be ‘saved’. It is always sad to see trees felled, but it is sometimes necessary. We believe the park needs a mixture of healthy growing trees and those left to provide wildlife habitats.
The FOBP has run a donor tree planting programme in Brockwell Park for decades, co-ordinating with the Council and its Tree Team. Last year, 24 new trees were donated and planted. The same is planned for 2024. In this way, the park is refreshed and rejuvenated and the loss of old or diseased trees is mitigated. Find out more about this programme on our website: www.brockwellpark.com
Support the park and find out more about our tree donor programme by joining the Friends of Brockwell Park – go to www.brockwellpark.com.
This Monday 16th January is your chance to give feedback to Lambeth Council and the event organisers of this summer’s major event series in Brockwell Park (26th May – 11th June). There are two sessions:
Half Moon pub in Herne Hill, SE24 9HU 14:00 – 16:00 High Trees Community Development Trust in Tulse Hill, SW2 2NS 18.00 – 20.00
Although the events are fixed for this summer, people are being asked for their views so that the organisers may incorporate them in the planning. For more information email the Brockwell Live Community Live team email them at community@brockwell-live.com or look at their website: brockwell-live.com/community.
Friends of Brockwell Park (FOBP) welcomes the decision to include the Lambeth Country Show (June10th/11th) in the main event series, shortening the closure of a large area of the park. FOBP remains opposed to large walled paying events in Brockwell Park.
Quick update on our recent activities around the Field Day/Mighty Hoopla event in June. At the Brockwell Park Community Partners open meeting on 25 March, we stated our total opposition to the event. We were also represented at the Mediation Meeting and the Licensing Committee Meeting for the event. Our views were put clearly, according to the categories in the criteria.
Friends of Brockwell Park deplores licensing go-ahead for Field Day event
Independent parks charity, the Friends of Brockwell Park (FOBP), deplores the decision by the London Borough of Lambeth’s Licensing Committee to grant a licence to Field Day/Mighty Hoopla to hold a massive, gated event in Brockwell Park this 1-3 June 2018. Lambeth’s decision comes despite a prolonged local campaign, in which FOBP played a prominent role.
FOBP chair Peter Bradley said: ‘This is absolutely the wrong decision. The intimate spaces of Brockwell Park are wholly unsuitable for events on this scale. Thousands of local people have made clear their objection and it is extremely depressing that the Council has not listened to us.
‘Because of government financial pressures, times are tight for local councils and we are afraid it appears that money has talked: this is an event that will bring £500,000 to Lambeth’s funds, although not a penny of that £500,000 will go to the Park that is generating the revenue.
‘This is a dreadful day for Lambeth parks. Use of them for events on this scale is a perversion of their purpose to be a haven of peace and relaxation for local people of all ages. They should not be an opportunity for private companies to make millions of pounds for their directors and shareholders, at the expense of local people and our beloved park. FOBP strongly hopes the London Borough of Lambeth will do a thorough review of its present events strategy, which is clearly not fit for purpose.’
The organisers of the proposed event in Brockwell Park this June, Field Day, have asked to meet with objectors. At this meeting and other opportunities, including the Licence Application meeting on April 4th , we will reiterate our ‘redlines’. These are:
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.
Friends of Brockwell Park has from the outset opposed the applications by Field Day/The Mighty Hoopla (1-3 June) and Lovebox/Citadel (13-15 July) to hold major events in Brockwell Park this summer, on the grounds that their size (up to 40,000 a day for three days, taking from a third to a fifth of the park for weeks at a time) was grossly disproportionate for a small, hilly urban park such as Brockwell.
So it was good news on 31 January that Lovebox/Citadel had decided to withdraw its application and move to Gunnersbury Park in Ealing. But on the same day, Field Day/The Mighty Hoopla announced it had received permission from Lambeth Council to go ahead with its major event in June half term, a time particularly precious for local families.
Cllr Sonia Winifred, Cabinet Member for Equalities and Culture, said: ‘We have engaged with residents, local businesses and other parties. Based on the resulting evaluation we have determined that two new major commercial events and the Lambeth Country Show this summer would be excessive.’
FOBP looks forward to seeing the evaluation on which Cllr Winifred has based her decision. We know thousands of people opposed both events; perhaps thousands of people we don’t know about supported them and Lambeth is playing the honest referee between them. If not, it looks as if Lambeth Council is plain ignoring local residents and going after the half million pounds it has been promised by Field Day/The Mighty Hoopla. It is interesting that, contrary to its own events strategy, Lambeth has ‘determined that two new major commercial events and the Lambeth Country Show this summer would be excessive’. It looks as if Lambeth is dressing up the withdrawal of Lovebox/Citadel as a worthy decision by Lambeth rather than a clever commercial move by Lovebox/Citadel to cut its losses and seek pastures new.
Friends of Brockwell Park believe this is a deplorable decision that will do real harm to the park and its supportive surrounding communities.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Cookie settingsACCEPT
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are as essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
