The London Borough of Lambeth (LBL) has just announced that it plans to close off significant parts of Brockwell Park for 46 days in 2021, to hold three major events. The Friends of Brockwell Park (FOBP) says the plans are turning Brockwell Park into a venue for making money, ignoring its increasingly important role, as a haven for the physical and mental health of local people. The adverse impact of the setup for the events and of 320,000 extra people on the park’s wildlife, ecology and physical infrastructure, especially if it rains, would be significant, says FOBP.
Here are the detailed LBL proposals (all dates are COVID-dependent, naturally):
- Summer Events Series 2021 (including Mighty Hoopla): 26 days in park, 6 major event days, 150,000 visitors, June
- Lambeth Country Show (LCS): 14 days in park, 2 major event days, 120,000 visitors, July
- Climate Live: 6 days in park, 1 major event day, spring or autumn, 50,000 visitors
- TOTAL: 46 days in park overall, 9 major event days, 320,000 visitors
In the pandemic, Brockwell Park has never been so busy, with thousands of people coming to it daily for their wellbeing. Young, old, the fragile and vulnerable, walkers, runners, parents with young children: all are showing they want the park to be a haven, yet Lambeth Council proposes to shut swathes of the park to them all for two-thirds of June and July 2021—the height of summer.
The council’s new Events Strategy 2020–2025 is of serious concern to the Friends. The previous strategy limited the number of major events in Brockwell Park to eight. Following action from FOBP, other park organisations, and the local community, we were given to understand there would be fewer major events. However, the new strategy sets no limits, as instanced by LBL’s proposal of nine major event days in Brockwell Park for 2021. ‘We negotiated in good faith,’ said FOBP chair, Peter Bradley, who personally attended the council’s Scrutiny Committee on Events, ‘but Lambeth Council has acted in bad faith. It has gone backwards on events. We were deceived.’
In addition to major walled events, it is proposed that multiple ‘non-grassed, hard-standing’ areas across parks should now also be made available for ‘smaller events’. Brockwell Park already hosts many events, and the Friends feel it shouldn’t have to host more.
As two FOBP surveys (2018 and 2019) have shown, these major events act as a blight on the majority of local business in Herne Hill : most experience a fall in revenue on major event days.
‘Parks were set up primarily for people’s physical and mental health,’ said FOBP chair, Peter Bradley. ‘These proposals are monetising every aspect of a precious place that people hold essential to their wellbeing in the pandemic and beyond. The council is taking the public realm and making it private. This is not our vision for the future of Brockwell Park. We call on councillors to reject these events.’
FOBP is asking people to contact their local councillors by 8 December 2020 regarding overuse of the park by major events. To get their councillors’ details, people should put their postcode into: www.writetothem.com. People are also asked to copy in the FOBP, info@brockwellpark.com, and the senior LBL officer in charge, Claire Horan: choran@lambeth.gov.uk