A new appeal to fund further legal action against Lambeth council over this year’s Brockwell Live events has already raised nearly £8,000.
The campaign group Protect Brockwell Park (PBP) said it had spent all of the £50,000 that it raised with its first appeal for cash. This funded a High Court case which won a ruling that the way the council gave permission for events in Brockwell Park this year was unlawful.
Lambeth council was told to pay £35,000 in legal costs to PBP.
The council both appealed against this ruling and swiftly granted permission for the events with a new certificate.
PBP says this was “a blatant attempt to undermine the rule of law”.
It claimed the ruling set a “vital precedent” for the protection of public green spaces everywhere in the UK.
PBP said a second judicial review and resisting the council’s appeal would be an opportunity to block a “loophole” the council is trying to create.
“We are advised that we have a strong case, and we are confident of success – if we can fund it,” PBP said.
The original £50,000, raised from just over 1,000 donors, was fully spent on:
- Covering remaining legal costs from the first, successful judicial review;
- Initial legal work resisting Lambeth council’s appeal; and
- Submitting a second judicial review request, challenging the new certificate issued by the council.
The legal issues at stake revolve around the ability of local authorities to approve events in open spaces for 28 days a year without going through a full change-of-use planning application process.
The objections of PBP and others based on the effect of festivals on wildlife in the park and damage to soil, grass and trees have yet to be tested in court.
The new appeal is at
crowdjustice.com/case/protect-judgment-brockwell-park
Polling for the online news provider London Centric by More in Common found that a majority of Londoners think festivals in parks are “good for the local community by bringing jobs, income, and entertainment to the area”.
Only 14% of a sample of Greater London residents believed that they are bad for the local community because of the noise and disruption.
More than two-thirds (67%) agreed that “when public parks are used for paid music festivals in the summer time” it is “good for the local community – by bringing jobs, income, and entertainment to the area”.
Another 14% thought such events were neither good nor bad and 6% did not know one way or another.
These festivals bring JOY to communities that badly need it.
No one is ‘privatising’ the park. The commercial events make the free, family-friendly Lambeth County Fair financially possible. They also underwrite the costs of rejuvenation afterwards. Is this not a fair, considered and worthwhile trade-off?
These people masquerading as pro-environment, anti-capitalist, pro-community campaigners are demonstrably blind to the clear and repeatedly-stated opinions of the actual community. They do not speak for the vast majority – yet they refuse to admit they hold a minority view.
That said, Lambeth Council have also been typically incompetent and underhanded. This whole situation risks becoming an annual embarrassment.
please can you fix the weblink for the Crowd Justice funding page – currently it’s just text and not a link like the other material on this webpage – https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/protect-judgment-brockwell-park/
also can you note that the ‘poll’ was focussed around noise and local business and not clear about leaving massive damage behind, nor was it clear who has been polled and how – what effort was made to engage people directly affected as opposed to simply those with some kind of generalised and uninformed view – it seems really unclear/sloppy at the moment
thanks
Imagine spending all your disposable on crushing joy for minority communities and the arts. Did none of them read the *hundreds* of comments on their socials pointing exactly this out?
No – huge privately run festivals behind 4m walls are not the way to meet the needs of minority communities or the arts. They are for the ticket revenues going to the private companies.
Festivals that are sympathetically scaled to the heritage greenspace here would still serve the community and the arts – in fact would do so better than this privatisation of a public space.
This park was bought and turned into a statutory trust over 100 years ago by donations from the local public for use by the local public – not to be left in a devastated damaged state with no respect for its users, appearance, ecology or the kind of events that would truly respect local communities and local arts.
This is not about being anti-festival – that’s just a lazy jibe that doesn’t engage with the real issues here – this is about being pro-this-park and sensitive to how it should be managed, respected and subject to proper assessments and processes by its trustholder Lambeth.
Huge damaging privately run festivals should be held at more suitable venues, like arenas or brownfield sites or less importantly needed or fragile fields.
You should come and see how it is left for all its local users and wildlife now that the commercial events have happened…. It visibly still hadn’t recovered from last year when these began again this year – let alone the year-on-year less visible damage to the ecology and wildlife.