Lambeth Council insists that the series of festivals due to kick off in South London’s Brockwell Park this weekend will go ahead as planned, despite the High Court last week ruling that the necessary planning permission was not in place to allow half the park to be repurposed as a festival venue for the next few weeks.
Operating under the banner Brockwell Live, festivals due to be staged in the park in the coming weeks include Wide Awake, Field Day, Cross The Tracks, City Splash, Brockwell Bounce and Mighty Hoopla, as well as the Lambeth Country Show.
A group of local residents argue that having that many commercially run festivals in their park is too disruptive. Having come together as Protect Brockwell Park, they took the council to court, successfully arguing that the process used by the local authority to greenlight Brockwell Live was unlawful.
After the court ruled in their favour, the residents heavily implied that the Brockwell Live festivals should be cancelled, stating “we hope the council will now choose to act lawfully and fairly, in line with their responsibility to hold the park on trust for the local community”.
However, a statement published on the Brockwell Live website earlier today says, “Friday’s High Court ruling dealt with a particular point of law and whether an administrative process had been carried out correctly. We wish to make it clear that no event will be cancelled as a result of the High Court’s decision”.
The Council issued its own statement explaining that the court last week actually approved the legal framework it employed to allow the park to be used for Brockwell Live. The issue, it adds, was procedural, in that a certificate it issued to event organisers covered more days than is legally allowed. Therefore organisers of Brockwell Live have applied for a new certificate covering a shorter time period.
Some of the Brockwell Live festivals were already under pressure this year because they are ultimately owned, via festivals company Superstruct, by private equity firm KKR. Some artists have pulled out of those events because of KKR’s investments in Israel. The Protect Brockwell Park group has also argued that New York-based KKR, rather than the local community, is the main beneficiary of Brockwell Live.
The staging of festivals by private companies in London’s parks has been a big talking point in recent years. Local residents around the likes of Finsbury Park in North London have also raised concerns about the inconvenience caused to the local community when big festivals take over.
Those festivals, critics argue, block off sizeable portions of some of London’s most important parks for weeks at a time, as well as putting a strain on local infrastructure on the day of the show. The event can also result in damage to the park itself, especially in wet weather.
The festivals obviously boost the capital’s cultural offering and can generate valuable revenue for cash-strapped councils, which is often used to pay for the management and development of the parks being utilised. There’s also the argument that the festivals can benefit local businesses by bringing large numbers of potential customers to the area.
However, there is definitely a debate to be had about how to balance those benefits with the inconvenience caused to residents who make use of the parks on a more regular basis. And the residents who formed Protect Brockwell Park argue that, with the Brockwell Live programme, Lambeth Council has failed to get the balance right.
Setting out its position, the PBP group explains, “residents use Brockwell Park as a safe haven, a public open space and a place to go for rest, play and relaxation”.
Noting that about 60% of people living in Lambeth reside in flats without access to a private garden, it estimates that “approximately 190,560 individuals lack private outdoor areas” in the borough. And for those people, Brockwell Park is a crucial amenity, especially in the summer months.
But, the group says, “during the months of May and June we are effectively locked out of the park due to a large wall that is erected over 35-50% of the park to house major commercial music events”.
While it insists that it isn’t looking to outright ban festivals from taking place in the local area, PBP says Brockwell Live is too big and too disruptive, and that “the fragile ecology of the park” is simply not designed “to hold over 285,000 people over a period of sixteen days”.
As PBP has become more vocal in campaigning against Brockwell Live, there have also been local people speaking out in support of the festival programme. They often stress that the festivals that take place in Brockwell Park champion and support different genres and communities, and that the local area benefits from having cultural events of this kind taking place there each summer.
Nevertheless, more than 3000 local residents signed a petition organised by PBP against Brockwell Live, while £40,000 was raised through crowd funding to finance legal action.
The legal dispute between PBP and Lambeth Council relates to how permission is formally granted for up to half of Brockwell Park to be repurposed as a festival venue for several weeks in May and June.
This temporary change of use is permitted under the Town And Country Planning Act, because – the council argues – it falls within the scope of what are known as ‘statutory permitted development rights’ as defined by the UK government in 2015.
To that end, all the council has to do is issue a certificate confirming that ‘statutory permitted development rights’ cover the staging of Brockwell Live, instead of going through a bespoke planning permission process.
However, PBP argues that, given the scale of the Brockwell Live events, they should be subject to proper planning permission, because that would provide an opportunity to undertake “robust environmental and community impact assessments”.
In terms of PBP’s specific legal challenge, that mainly related to how long Brockwell Park is out of action as a result of the festivals, because change of use under ‘statutory permitted development rights’ is only possible for 28 days in any one year. PBP argues that the festivals actually impact the park for around 37 days in total.
The council has also been criticised for handling the planning permission required by the Country Show - which it itself produces and which is generally less controversial - separately, even though it is billed as part of Brockwell Live.
As a result, the campaign group took Lambeth Council to court, seeking a so called judicial review, where a judge considers if the decision of a public body is lawful. The ultimate aim was for the judge to cancel the certificate issued by the local authority that stated that Brockwell Live fell within the scope of ‘statutory permitted development rights’. Which the judge did on Friday.
While that was seen as a major win for the local campaign group, putting the future of Brockwell Live in jeopardy, the statement from the council today suggests it believes that a slight rejig of the logistics and a resulting amendment to the paperwork will address the issues raised in court. To that end, organisers of the festival programme are now requesting a certificate from the council covering 24 days.
Campaigners are likely to see that as a fudge and will no doubt continue to call for a major rethink of the programming of summer events in Brockwell Park, if not for this year, for future years.