CROYDON COMMENTARY: The impact of the Wireless Festival in Crystal Palace Park last weekend, and its effect on residents in neighbouring boroughs has seen GLYNN McDONALD raise some serious questions of the park’s new trust
Fun in the sun: Around 150,000 concert-goers, paying around £70 per ticket, attended the Wireless Festival last weekend
The Wireless Festival staged in Crystal Palace Park last weekend saw 150,000 people over three days, road closures and noise audible for half a mile.
Bromley Council and its agent, the Crystal Palace Park Trust, take the cash from the event organisers, but they have a brilliant solution to complaints: it locates the festival in the far north of the borough and directs the noise at the neighbouring boroughs of Southwark and Croydon.
And the small number of Bromley residents affected all live in Labour voting wards…
There are serious questions about all of this.
Why did the council or the trust agree to this massive festival when it’s already known for the nuisance it caused when staged in north London? The Friends of Finsbury Park looked at taking their council to court to try and get it stopped. They must be celebrating now!
Val Shawcross: the chair of the Trust, which is accused of ‘privatising’ the park’s care
Why were objections to this year’s festival ignored when they included one from Bromley’s own Public Health and Nuisance team? They objected in September 2020 because “the information at this point is insufficient in detail for us as a local authority to make a judgement at this current time under the prevention of public nuisance”.
Why has Val Shawcross agreed to head an organisation which is privatising the care of the park? The Crystal Palace Park Trust boasts that income from the festival will help renovate the park’s disgusting toilets. Surely that is the least that Bromley should be taking care of?
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