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Brighton Pride criticises train company after dangerous over-crowding at the city’s station
By Chris Cooke | Published on Monday 6 August 2018
Organisers of Brighton Pride have hit out at Govia Thameslink Railway after its train service and the city’s station failed to deal with the crowds of people heading back home after the Britney Spears-headlined festival that took place as part of this weekend’s Pride festivities.
Both the train company and local police came in for criticism on the social networks on Saturday night over the way they managed – or not – the crowds of people outside the station after the Pride Festival. Many said that they felt the over-crowding outside was dangerous at times, while some Pride-goers said they gave up trying to get home and slept on the beach instead.
According to The Independent, a spokesperson for Brighton Pride said: “We were appalled to see that Pride-goers were standing for long periods of time, at the end of the event, while waiting to access Brighton Station, and with almost no information provided by GTR. People’s safety was put in jeopardy by GTR and the station’s failure to plan for adequate train services”.
They went on: “We are very disappointed that GTR were unable to provide sufficient services to people returning home from a day of celebrating Pride and enjoying the hot weather in Brighton & Hove. This is particularly concerning, given the months of planning and inter-agency working that we undertake each year to make Brighton Pride a safe and happy event”.
For its part, GTR said that the numbers of people attending Brighton Pride were significantly higher than expected, even by organisers, and that they had put on additional trains at the last minute to deal with the extra traffic.
It said in a statement yesterday: “When it became apparent yesterday morning that attendance at Pride was far higher than had been forecast by the organisers, we put on as many extra trains as possible through the afternoon and evening, boosting capacity by 22,500”.
It went on: “We continued to encourage people to leave early to avoid crowding for the last train. We ran fifteen extra trains yesterday in addition to the plan agreed with the event organisers to cope with the unprecedented visitor numbers”.
