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Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!

Islington Council challenging Jamaica Village 2012 plans for Finsbury Park

Further to our earlier reports that olympic villages are planned at Finsbury and Alexandra Parks, we have learned today today that Islington Council has challenged plans for a ten-day Jamaica

An application for permission to host outdoor concerts and sell alcohol as part of the village has been submitted to Haringey Council, but is being opposed by Islington.

Jan Hart, service director for public protection at Islington Council, described the 20,000 capacity of the event as “excessive”, and raised fears of serious disruption and public transport being overloaded by people coming to the event from across London.

In her submission to the licensing application, she called for more analysis of the impact, and asked for the festival to run for just four days instead of ten.

Some local residents have previously complained that the festival will deprive local of the use of  part of the park and will cause noise disruption fro too long. Fears about the effectiveness of the post party clear-up have also been voiced.

The festival organisers and local public service officials insist that every precaution has been taken.

Haringey's Environmental health officers have set a noise level limit for loud music to try to reduce the impact on neighbours. Local police have laid out a series of conditions to ensure public order and safety is maintained and Transport for London has said it believes public transport will be able to handle the influx of people for the festival.

Haringey councillors are due to meet on Monday, December 12, to rule on the application.

Tags for Forum Posts: 2012, finsbury park, jamaica village, olympics

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With regards to the Village, below is a letter from Haringey's Business Development Manager with more detailed info about the 'village'. It was published a few weeks ago on the Stroud Green Residents' Association Yahoo Group in resposne to enquiries from one of its members:


From: Farrow Simon (Simon.Farrow@haringey.gov.uk)
Date: 7 November 2011 11:23:36 GMT
To: XXXXX
Subject: Our Ref 10549 - Jamaica Village - Finsbury Park - August 2012

Dear XXXXX,

Please find below answers to your questions:-

1. Has the Council entered into a contract with Jamaica Village Limited for this event.

Yes the Council as land owner has entered into a contract for this event. However, this is completely separate to the grant of an events licensing decision. Should the event fail to get its licence then the contract would be terminated and the contract makes provision for such an event.

 

2. How much of the park is going to be taken over and which areas.

See attached plan. This is the area which is subject to the hire of the park. The area to be licensed is larger than this but this is purely to allow the events security to eject any trouble makers from the park and not just the event.

 

3. What is the total number of days, including setting up and taking down - an additional ten days?, for this event.

The event runs from the 3rd August through to the 12 August a total of 10 days of event activities. Site set up commences Monday 23rd July and the site cleared by Sunday 19th August inclusive. 28 Days in total. The Council has agreed that this is five days in addition to the five days of events permitted under the current event policy. Each of the five one day events is permitted a week set up and a week set down. Therefore although the event last for 10 days the setup / set down periods will be limited to three weeks rather than a potential 10 weeks if we had bookings for five one day events.

 

4. What consultation has taken place with local residents groups concerning noise and the loss of park facilities.

Initially, consultation on the event hire agreement took place with local ward councillors and the Friends of Finsbury Park. The event licensing process is the formal process by which local people would be able to comment on the event.

As the plan referenced in 2 above shows the event is not taking up any more space than would normally be used for large scale events. The current licence application proposes that concert level music will be limited to three hours a day and this will have ended by 8pm each evening.

After this time there will be some amplified sound but this will largely be linked to the displaying of action from the Olympics on large screens within the park. There is provision within the contract to deter the organisers from continuing with loud music outside of the licensed times.

Whilst I recognise that restrictions will be in place on the areas available within the park the area covered by the event once set up will be less than 25% of the park.

 

5. Has an environmental impact assessment been carried out on the effects that up to 50,000 people per day will have on the park.

As my colleague in licensing has confirmed the licence application is for 19,999 people. However, the operators are planning for 15,000 and not 50,000 people per day. Earlier plans were based on higher figures which is why you have seen other people quote higher numbers. Every event in London next year is subject to co-ordination through the Olympic Event Calendar. To that end all events are subject to input from both the emergencies services and Olympic co-ordinating colleagues. Through the input of these agencies the nature of the event has been shaped and modified. This has lead to the total number of tickets being reduced.

The impact on the park will be very dependent on the prevailing weather conditions next July and August. The organisers are required to have an adverse weather plan which covers extremes of temperature as well as rain. We will be ensuring that they have taken all necessary precautions to protect the site from damage and many of these are stated in their contract. In the event that the park infrastructure is damaged we have a bond in place to cover the cost of repairing any damaged caused.

 

6. Has London Transport been consulted on the impact that 50,000 extra passengers will have on Finsbury Park tube station.

As stated above London Transport have been part of the planning process and are confident that they can cope with the volumes attending the event. As the event will run form 11am to 11pm people will be arriving and leaving throughout the day so it is anticipated that the majority of people will not leave in one go, unlike a concert that has a hard finish time.

 

So I take it that since the park is in Harringay Ward, that all our three ward councillors were consulted?

Attachments:

Hello

I don't quite understand what this village is for, what will be there. Olympic Village just sounds like a catch-all. Is it for the Jamaican team and it's representatives or another commercial venture?

There are screens, live music, food stalls. Is that correct? Any sport events?

I didn't sign up for this level of commercial invasion.

Very disappointed.

 

This contribution from Alex some while back should give you the flavour, Gill.

Have to say I think it sounds like it could be good fun - assuming it's properly managed. Nice to have a bit of the Olympics up here!

Could be worse - could have the stadium up here and all the Olympic 'family' driving through in their special car lanes (at our green Olympics!)

I just noticed this from Simon Farrow's letter:

 

to allow the events security to eject any trouble makers from the park and not just the event.


It would be nice to be reassured as to the extent of the powers that will be ceded to this private security force, wouldn't it?

I've checked with the councillors and as far as they can make out, they can't trace having being consulted on this at all as Simon Farrow claimed in his letter, but they're checking to see if they've missed anything.

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