‘It becomes a no-go zone all summer': How music festivals are ruining British parks

Yahoo

26-04-2025

It's 2pm on a Sunday in April and thousands of people have flocked to one of south London's so-called 'green lungs', the 125-acre Brockwell Park, nestled between Brixton, Dulwich and Norwood. While it has previously attracted the likes of Vincent van Gogh, Charlie Chaplin and David Bowie, today, users from all sectors of society run around the park's sweeping 3.5km (two miles) outer trail, walk their dogs, ride the BMX track, play on the tennis courts or cricket nets, or brave a cold-water dip in the unheated lido (currently a brisk 14C). Mostly though, people sit down on the grass with friends and just enjoy the space.
Because space, in the inner London borough of Lambeth, is at a premium. According to council data, in 2022 the district had the seventh-highest population density in the country at 12,306 people per square kilometre, more than twice that in the rest of London and 32 times that of the UK as a whole.
Locals (and declaring my interest, I am one) know this is a time to be enjoyed. In a few weeks, the council intends to fence off more than a quarter of the park for 37 days (in 2024, adverse weather meant some fencing was up for a total of 68 days) with 11ft-high solid metal barriers.
The hoardings – which loom over much of the park's perimeter, shutting off walking routes, blocking the light and obscuring the views of the capital's skyline the park is famous for – herald the start of the Brockwell Live events series, a 'collective of independent festivals' in the words of organisers; nine days of large-scale (some, up to 50,000 people) events over three weeks, during which some standard day tickets cost more than £90 per person. Locals describe feeling 'penned in' by the structures, which transform their park from somewhere that feels open and free into somewhere 'oppressive feeling', or, in the words of Oscar-winning actor and local resident Sir Mark Rylance, 'a prison camp'.
It's a mood doubtlessly familiar to park users up and down the country who increasingly find their council-tax-funded open spaces fenced off after being rented out to profit-making private companies, particularly during the 'festival season' summer months when cash-strapped local authorities scramble to make ends meet.
In the north of the capital, despite losing a legal challenge in 2017, residents around 110-acre Finsbury Park continue to oppose Haringey council, which rents out a swath of their green space to large-scale music events including the 50,000 capacity Wireless Festival, which runs for three consecutive nights in July. Local people around Gunnersbury, Victoria and Crystal Palace parks, to name a few, also struggle with the impact of large-scale for-profit music events occupying their open spaces. Hyde Park in central London, which is run by Royal Parks, hosts the BST festivals for three weekends during June and July – not counting the events' set-up and de-rig time – and then also the Winter Wonderland event, which runs for six weeks plus set-up and take-down time from November to January, meaning large areas of the park are out of bounds for more than a quarter of the year.
The events leave behind a desolate landscape in the parkland itself, with great areas devoid of grass, and soil transformed into a kind of hard standing, compacted by the weight of people, structures and heavy machinery.
Increasing numbers of festivals of varying sizes are coming to urban parks outside of London too. Manchester council has faced complaints and opposition from residents neighbouring the city's 640-acre Heaton Park who have objected to the disruption and damage caused by the 80,000 capacity Parklife festival in June, which occupies between 10 and 15 per cent of the park's area. This year the park will also host five nights of Oasis reunion gigs in July. Many locals also want an end to events in Sefton Park, Liverpool – this year home to Radio 1's Big Weekend festival – the noise and disruption from which has forced residents from their homes in previous years. Indeed, complaints about inappropriate-sized events run the length of the country, from Kelvingrove Park in Glasgow to the Boardmasters festival on the cliff park above Newquay's Watergate Bay in Cornwall.
The Open Spaces Society (OSS) is the oldest amenity society in the country and a charity, which saved Epping Forest and Hampstead Heath for the public and also gave birth to the National Trust. It says it is seeing increasing numbers of these large-scale events on public land, and points out that there are myriad intermeshing laws and guidance on how parks, woodlands, commons and other public spaces can be used. In 2017, the OSS supported The Friends of Finsbury Park to take Haringey Council to court to fight for the public's free right to use the space without being excluded by large paid-for events such as the Wireless Festival, a case they lost.
'Our issue is with the commercialisation of our parks and commons. We object to any event that is more than a small local get together designed to bring communities together,' says OSS spokesman Helen Monger. '[These events are] devastating because parks are a vital part of our infrastructure. We call them 'the natural health service' because they're so beneficial for our mental and physical health, let alone the benefits they bring to the natural world. Open spaces have so much more value than just the financial; unfortunately this is not the way many local authorities see them. They're too often treated as assets to be 'sweated', in other words, to be rented out to make money rather than spaces to benefit local people.'
While Lambeth Council argues fencing off and renting out the historic Brockwell Park for large-scale commercial events – which has been happening since 2018 – is a necessary revenue stream in the face of an 'extremely challenging financial future' due to 'years of structural underfunding from central government', residents of the borough (who have also recently been hit with the highest allowed council tax rise totalling 4.99 per cent) are fighting back.
The Friends of Brockwell Park, a local charity devoted to protecting the park, are objecting to the event permit issued by the council. 'The evident impacts on the fabric of the park, together with the sacrifices required of users, neighbours and local businesses are much too great to be balanced by the entertainment benefits and income from the events,' say the group's members.
Then there's Protect Brockwell Park, another group of more than 500 residents (including celebrities such as Rylance and Bridgerton's Adjoa Andoh) who have raised more than £30,000 to launch a legal challenge against Lambeth Council over its hiring out of the public park to private companies running for-profit events. 'We are a poor borough but shame on you @Lambeth_Council for not protecting the park better,' wrote Andoh on X in March. 'Ancient trees, wildlife and green spaces all decimated under your watch.'
Lucy Akrill, a local resident and a volunteer organiser of the Protect Brockwell Park campaign, who has dedicated more than 1,000 hours of her time to organising on this issue this year, says: 'Our issue is that Lambeth council is giving the promoters a repeated pass to put on these festivals without sufficient scrutiny or transparency, and without following a process that can be challenged by people.
'This is a historic park which was left in trust to the people of Lambeth. It's not meant to be rented out and ruined. The soil is being compacted by footfall, structures and heavy vehicles and machinery, tree roots are being compromised including ancient oaks and year-on-year we are seeing a staggering loss of trees and biodiversity, including protected bats. The festivals are also put on during the nesting season for birds. It's almost 11 months since the festival fences went up last year and the ground still hasn't recovered,' she says.
Zoe Davis, a 28-year-old nursery educator who walks her dog in the park, adds: 'I love music, but the prospect of the fences coming makes me anxious.' Her family lives in a flat one road back from the park. 'Every year, when the festivals come, they sound louder and leave the park more damaged. The festival site is out of action not only the weeks before and during the festivals when it is fenced off, but afterwards too. Then, big areas of the park become a no-go zone all summer – no one wants to sit on dusty, wrecked ground that is left behind. Then it floods when it rains over winter.'
It's not that Davis doesn't want music on her doorstep. As a fan of Afrobeats and dancehall, she says she and her friends like quite a few of the acts playing this year. But not only can she not afford to attend but she says the levels of noise and the closing off of outdoor space she depends on make the three weekends of the festivals 'a kind of hell'.
'I know that sounds drastic,' she says. 'But from when soundchecks start in the morning until the event finishes – some nights at 11pm – there is a constant noise and vibration, several weekends in a row, sometimes four consecutive days and nights.'
Davis's mother (who does not want to give her name, as she lives in council accommodation) tells me she is particularly worried because the events coincide with when her youngest son will be revising for his GCSE exams. 'The festivals are so disruptive. My sister, who lives two miles away, can hear the music some days… This park is surrounded on all sides by housing. We have complained, but were told that the sound levels were within the terms of the licence. But ultimately it is too loud, it's a health hazard.'
While noise, damage to the environment and the fencing off of the park are some of the most common complaints heard from the residents who spoke to The Telegraph (and also voiced at community consultation meetings organised by Brockwell Live and attended by The Telegraph), they are by no means the only ones. Some cite the hundreds of abandoned rental e-bikes left at the park's entrances and neighbouring streets, which make pavements in the area impossible to navigate. Others complain about mountains of litter and broken bottles in the area surrounding the event, festival goers parking dangerously or even in people's driveways, revellers urinating or defecating on their doorsteps or front gardens or otherwise in public. Floodlights loom over the space, powered by the hum of generators which run almost all night.
There is also a marked rise in drug offences and antisocial behaviour, alongside crime in general. According to data obtained from the Metropolitan Police's online crime maps, during May and June 2024 (when the festivals occurred) there were 57 drug crimes recorded in or near the area adjacent to the festival entrance. By contrast, there were no drug crimes recorded in Brockwell Park in April 2024, and one for the rest of the year, which equates to a 5,700 per cent rise in drug crime in the festival period compared with the non-festival period. There were also 16 thefts in Brockwell Park in May compared with none in April, and 15 violent or sexual offences in the park in May and June compared with eight for the other 10 months of 2024.
'We understand the council needs to make more money, and we aren't anti festivals per se,' says Akrill. 'We want to have frank discussions about the damage being done to the park and an acknowledgement that no amount of mitigation can protect it from inevitable damage from such large-scale annual events. We want them to review the scale and regularity of commercial events and acknowledge that Brockwell Park is a fragile ecological and heritage asset whose prime purpose is for the health and well-being of people and wildlife. But Lambeth won't engage with us on any meaningful level.'
Indeed, Lambeth Council refused an interview request from The Telegraph on this matter and were either reticent to answer questions or not present at Brockwell Live's community meetings held in February and March 2025. Councillor Donatus Anyanwu, Lambeth's Cabinet Member for Stronger Communities, did issue us with a prepared statement pointing out that the council believe these events ('which run for a short period before summer') provide 'significant cultural opportunities and entertainment for younger people across the borough' and 'support businesses in the area…'
'We work hard to engage with local people living around the park about events there, as well as people living across Lambeth in recognition of Brockwell Park's importance for our whole borough. We appreciate there can be impacts on people in the surrounding neighbourhood, alongside organisers we are working hard to minimise disruption… We are committed to addressing all potential issues promptly and effectively, while ensuring Lambeth's residents continue to have access to a diverse and meaningful range of events.'
The statement also points out that Brockwell Live contributes money towards the free-to-enter Brockwell Bounce kids event and the Lambeth Country Show, now in its 51st year. 'Running the Lambeth Country Show in partnership with Brockwell Live saved the council £700,000 last year…'
In terms of monies, Lambeth Council confirmed in writing that it also receives '£50,000 for local charities and organisations [and] £125,000 for Lambeth parks, of which 80 per cent is ring-fenced for Brockwell Park'. They could not confirm how many of the tickets sold for the 'for-profit' events were to Lambeth residents, but a spokesperson for Brockwell Live said more than half of the 250,000 attendees over the entire festival period were from London more widely.
In comparison, in a statement Haringey Council told The Telegraph that they receive £1.2 million for the festival events held in Finsbury Park. Gina Harkell, the joint chair of The Friends of Finsbury Park, says, 'This equates to £5 or £6 for every £135 Wireless Festival ticket sold,' and adds that, 'according to the council, only 8 per cent of ticket buyers were living in Haringey.' (The council themselves say they 'cannot substantiate that figure for 2024').
'Haringey Council try to say that these are events for people in the borough, but according to their own research, half of the attendees come from outside of the capital,' she says. 'This is why people cannot access their free-to-use park. They also claim it benefits local businesses, but Friends of Finsbury Park spoke to 140 traders around the space. In previous years, 70 per cent saw no gain to their business at all while the events were on.'
Ed Allnutt is a wildlife gardener and passionate environmentalist who has supported numerous campaigns to protect open spaces across London, including Clapham Common, Whitewebbs Park and Brockwell Park. 'This issue crosses the political divide,' he says.
'Most people don't agree with parts of public parks being fenced off for events, but our legislation is not sufficient to protect them. It's not privatisation by stealth; our parks are being privatised with surprising openness. And people are getting more and more angry about it, and they are right to be. Often these parks were put into trust by rich benefactors to be enjoyed by local people in perpetuity, but councils are now breaching that trust. What we're finding is that the laws which were supposed to guarantee that are not sufficient. And, the people who are guaranteeing the rules will be upheld are also the people who stand to benefit from the parks being used in these exploitative ways.'
But some authorities are making moves to enshrine and protect our natural resources. Recently, Lewes District Council in East Sussex made history by recognising the river Ouse as a living entity with intrinsic rights, paving the way for it to become the first UK river to be granted legal personhood. The protections are something Rebekah Shaman, a local Brockwell resident who's just completed an MSc in global environmental politics and policy, would like to see happen for other open spaces too.
'Ultimately, until parks and nature have a voice, they cannot advocate for its own best interests,' she says. 'It's our duty to speak out for the park and the ecology and ecosystems within it to protect it from harm.'
Helen Monger of the OSS says that she would like to see national government bolster protections for our parks, and suggests that appointing a new Minister for Parks would be a good place to start. 'Governments signalling that these spaces are important is key,' she says. 'Rishi Sunak was the last Minister for Parks and since 2019 there has not been anyone occupying that role – that's something we feel is important to remedy in terms of advocating for these spaces.'
And, although Monger says that historically there has been 'a limited amount – if anything – people can do about large-scale events in public parks' through the legal system, she urges people to 'join local parks' 'friends of' groups, use licensing regulations to complain about noise and litter and pressure the local authority to use the money to improve the parks and open spaces where you live… Show decision makers they will be held accountable.'
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