The group campaigning against the use of London’s Brockwell Park for a series of music festivals is now looking ahead to 2026, telling its supporters that a second round of legal action it is embarking on should stop the “kind of misuse of planning powers” at Lambeth Council which let the 2025 edition of Brockwell Live go ahead.
However, new funds are urgently needed to continue with the legal action, the group adds, with another crowd funding campaign launched, aiming to bring in £25,000.
The Protect Brockwell Park group put out a new statement as the high court judgement from its first successful legal action was published. The full judgment clarifies why the high court cancelled a certificate initially issued by Lambeth Council that said Brockwell Live could proceed.
Despite that ruling, the 2025 editions of the various Brockwell Live festivals went ahead last month after the council issued a second certificate, which is what the second round of legal action relates to.
That legal action - technically speaking a ‘judicial review’ - is “our chance to make the original judgment watertight and stop this kind of misuse of planning powers from happening again in future years”, says the campaign group in its latest statement.
Given some of the festivals that operate under the Brockwell Live banner have already put tickets on sale for their 2026 editions, they and the council will be hoping that the local residents behind Protect Brockwell Park are unsuccessful in court.
The dispute relates to whether or not the Brockwell Live festivals can happen without the events’ promoters going through a full planning permission process.
Lambeth Council says that the temporary repurposing of part of Brockwell Park as a festival venue is possible under the Town And Country Planning Act via what are known as ‘statutory permitted development rights’. That means a full planning permission process is not required.
However, use of the park as a festival venue under that act is only possible for 28 days in any one calendar year. Because an event in the park over the Christmas period had already used up four days in 2025, Brockwell Live could only repurpose the park for a total of 24 days. And that needs to include setting up and dismantling the festival stages.
As confirmed in the now published high court judgement, technically the delivery of Brockwell Live was going to take 37 days. However, the final event staged as part of the series is the council’s own Lambeth Country Show.
The council secures full planning permission for that particular event, so argued that the delivery of Brockwell Live only actually repurposed the park until the end of penultimate festival in the series, Mighty Hoopla on 2 Jun. Which was 22 days after set up began.
Therefore, the council decided that Brockwell Live could be staged under ‘statutory permitted development rights’ and issued a certificate to say so. Even though, at the point the festival promoters put in their application for that certificate, planning had not been issued for the Country Show.
That latter point was key to Protect Brockwell Park’s success in court. The judge ruled that, at the point the festival promoters applied for their certificate, the full proposed change of use of the park “from public open space to temporary event space” constituted “development requiring planning permission” and “the mere possibility of a future grant of planning permission” for the Country Show was irrelevant.
In his ruling, the judge was keen to stress that his judgement was based on a very narrow legal question regarding the process Lambeth Council had gone through and the specific timing of that process. Which is presumably why the council insisted that the judgement came down to a technicality that could be easily addressed with the issuing of the second certificate.
A cursory reading of the judgement does seem to suggest that the council was probably right on that point. But Protect Brockwell Park seems confident that there were solid grounds for cancelling the second certificate too, had it not been issued so last minute there was no time to challenge it in court.
But, of course, if it can be successfully challenged in hindsight, that will likely force the council to adopt a different approach to the staging of the Brockwell Live festivals in 2026.
Protect Brockwell Park argues that the scale of Brockwell Live - which includes five commercially owned festivals as well as the Country Show - is too disruptive for the local population who rely on the park as a crucial amenity. The council counters that Brockwell Live offers a diverse range of events for local residents, plus the commercial festivals provide infrastructure for the Country Show.
If the whole festival programme did have to go through a full planning permission process, which would involve much more scrutiny, both sides would have an opportunity to argue their respective cases. Campaigners hope, through that process, they could stop the full festival series from going ahead.
We shall see. What seems certain is that while Brockwell Live 2025 is over, the battle over Brockwell Live 2026 has only just begun.