fishboy

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/jun/26/cardiff-blackweir-festival-bute-park-dispute?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other Another example of a badly sited festival, and a council bending over for the cash. What amazes me is the similarity in every way to Gala - large areas annexed but the council trying to convince everyone it's only a tiny part of the park. Claiming that the flora & fauna is being protected when the reality is a tick-box environmental survey that's not worth the paper it's written on. All very depressing.

Splat

Stamp

I think there's the usual number this year -15-20 - screeching around high & low, zooming between the houses and generally being awesome. The back gardens between Colyton, Dovedale, Mundania & Shelbury always seem to have a colony in the summer - no idea where their nests are though. There's also what appears to be a solitary bat that zooms back & forth along the front gardens of Colyton, unless it is several but you never see two at once!

* Big, sick & tired sigh * Ok, so here is this year's small selection of Gala litter that has been left behind. I have to emphasise, it is only a small part of what is still there, collected on Tuesday from a relatively small area in the south of the ex-site. I also have to emphasise this only took about an hour of slow wandering, using only my eyes & hands - no specialist equipment, and I'm not a paid employee of a specialist waste management company. And to confirm, this is after "The site was checked at the end of GALA’s tenancy and found to be clear of event-related litter" by the Council / Parks Dept. There's 488 items there, many of which would be potentially hazardous to children, pets & wildlife. Not least the small bag in the bottom left corner, still containing a suspicious white substance. I'm hoping to pass this on to the police for testing, ensuring it is recorded for the purposes of next year's licence consideration. Please - before anyone posts any comments defending this, denying it is festival related, insulting me, whatever - just go and have a close look yourself, particularly where the tents, stages & toilets were sited. It's obviously from the festival, and there's still loads of it there, all over our park. It is literally being trashed, year after year, despite repeated assurances from the organisers. I'm sick of it, it's just so depressing.

These statements were in the Consultation Findings report published (later than promised) just before the licence was granted: "The site hire fee goes directly to supporting the delivery of the council’s Events service, which supports the delivery of up to 100 free-to-attend community events per year – please refer to section 1 (Licensing and income)" I've drafted an email to request some more details of these "free-to-attend" events, as "up to" is a fairly meaningless description - could be 100, could be none? - and therefore doesn't help anyone to decide whether it is actually a benefit to the community or not. Even if it is 100, I'm not sure I could name even one of them? "The site hire fee goes directly to supporting the provision of a grants fund – the Cultural Celebrations programme - please refer to section 1 (Licensing and income)" A similarly meaningless statement in terms of gauging whether, or how much, this is a benefit to the local community. What is it, what does it do, how much of the fee goes to it? And how can the fee go "directly" to two different things? Surely, "directly" means without deviation, straight to, without being changed or reduced?? Again, I'll be asking all these questions to the events dept. I find it outrageous & insulting that a public body can try to justify such an intrusive & disruptive event with such flimsy and opaque "benefits", with zero figures or details to quantify them. They may as well not bother with a consultation, just say "Look, we can't be arsed to justify our decision, it's happening so just deal with it".

Paste

Sorry for dragging this back on topic, but earlier I had a discussion with Luca the site manager who was also singing the praises of the 'new' waste management team. He invited me on to the ground to the east of the 'parkrun start' path to check out how well they'd done. Within 20 paces I'd picked up (and given to him) 2 cellophane filter tip wrappers, 3 fag butts, a 2" screw, assorted scraps of plastic wrappers....! He awkwardly then said they were still onsite, and sent 1 guy out to litter pick. He also made the statement that it's "an impossible task". I will be over there tomorrow to find, collect and document all the remaining litter, to assist with next year's consultation. I think it's important to pass on that type of information?

They are. We are back to the same construction racket 8am-8pm every day for the whole of this week. The wall is one of the last things to come down, probably on Saturday. Then we can see how much of a mess they've made, especially the quantity of non-biodegradeable litter trampled into the earth. GALA 2025 - Production Schedule.pdf

I fully support this petition, however it will need to be shared far & wide to be effective. Also there is always a huge amount of interest / objection during the festival, but not so much when they start consulting for the next one, usually around January. It's crucial that everyone that has been impacted makes their voice heard then. A couple of points which may be good to include in the wording (if it is still possible to amend?) - The total tickets sold are way more than 3000. The licence allows a capacity of up to 9,999, but this may include staff & performers etc. The published attendance for 2024 was: Friday – 8,999 / Saturday – 9,512 / Sunday – 9,422 So that's c.28,000 people trampling & littering our park over three days - people who have no need or desire to take any care or consideration of our park. - Gala claim for 2024 that "62% of all ticket holders were from Southeast London and 18% of these were from hyper-local postcode areas SE15 and SE22." So a bit of maths shows that means that around 89% of attendees were not what most people would term 'local'... - Gala have ambitions / plans to extend the number of event days to 6, over two weekends. They applied for a licence for this in 2024, but then withdrew it. Instead they added a "free" event, billed as a community day, to the existing 3 day festival, thereby increasing the event days to 4. This would appear to be an attempt to set a precedent for increasing the number of event days, and it's inevitable that they will attempt to secure the 6 days they desire for 2026, to increase their profits further. Two weekends in a row of noise, disturbance & disruption would be unacceptable, plus another c.28,000 trampling & littering the park - so 56,000 in total!!! - The site size has been increased. The claim is that it is to compensate for lost storage space due to recent flood alleviation works, but the area has increased by more than the area lost, and appears to have been used for attendee activity rather than site storage. Gala have often stated that the festival can only be located in the park because the footprint has been designed specifically for that area, and yet this year the footprint had been amended & extended without any apparent issues. Surely this proves that it could be relocated? Apologies, I just can't help going into rant mode on this issue, but hopefully some of the above may be helpful in increasing the argument presented by the petition?

If you're finding Stag Beetles then please be really cautious if you have any piles of dead wood, as the larvae live & feed in them for around 7 years before emerging as beetles. Hence why they are endangered, as many people get rid of this kind of stuff when clearing overgrown gardens & land. We regularly used to see them walking across the path in the park near Colyton Road, but not a single one since that area was cleared & mulched by the park staff a few years back...

My understanding is the "free event" is 100% Gala, nothing to do with the council. Obviously Gala will still make money from the food & drink that they are trying to coerce punters into buying on their social media posts. Their costs will be negligible due to already having the infrastructure in place for Gala. So Gala are trying to appear community minded by providing this "free event" - which surely no one could possibly object to?!? - but the real goal is clearly to set a precedent for a fourth day's festival in preparation for applying (again) for two three-day festivals spread over two weekends. It's only another two days, right, and the site & equipment is already there, so why would anyone object?!? More money for the council, much more money for Gala, win-win right? But yet another week of our park taken away from us, too, and another 18,000 people trampling & littering the park, and another week of disturbance for the native birds & wildlife...

Tease

There are many negative aspects to the Gala festival, those that I am most concerned about include the residual litter & damage to the park and the impact on wildlife. The latter is supposedly absolved by the "Wildlife Survey" which is carried of each year, but has a sadly limited scope purely to tick a box, rather than actually investigate the effects to wildlife in the park as a whole. The survey document is available on the council website, but this summary from it is a good indication of the level of consideration Gala really have: "The 2025 pre-show nesting bird survey found no evidence of active bird nests within the designated event footprint, and therefore no additional mitigation is required within the working area." This clearly shows that all they are bothered about is whether there are nests onsite, which would prevent them from their construction activities, nothing more. The impact of 24/7 lighting, flashing lights, construction noise, loud music on wildlife outside of the site is of zero interest to them. Here's a map from the survey, showing nests onsite, and possible nests outside the site, and yet it makes no difference to their activities. Crack on, nothing onsite, don't care about anything else? PS I've just noticed that this map references the site footprint from 2022, yet is from the latest 2025 survey. And this is supposed to be a survey from a professional body?? PPS I've just noticed a bat survey on the council website by the same company, which states: "To minimise potential disturbances to local bat populations during the festival, it is recommended to limit artificial lighting and reduce noise levels starting at least 20 minutes before sunset throughout the event period in May 2025." So which part of this did Gala adhere to?!?

I think we're probably closest - about 50m from one of the tents - and to be honest it's not that bad. The bass is making the windows vibrate but it's not 'noisy' I've always said the loud music is the least of the issues to me. It's the construction for two weeks before / one week after, the imposing steel wall, the trodden in non-decomposing litter (fag butts, cable ties, vapes, bottle tops, ring pulls) which will cover the entire site forever, the compaction & damage to the grass which takes months to recover, the impact on birds, bats & wildlife of 24/7 lights, the anti social behaviour of so many attendees (p***ing on the streets and in the bushes) and this year the blatant extending of the site footprint, despite previously giving the reason they can't move it is because it's been designed for that location. And hopefully everyone can see this for what it really is - an attempt to win over the local community and set a precedent for four festival days, so that they have a stronger argument when they put in an application for six days again next year. Southwark state that the money from Gala goes directly to supporting their Events dept, who support "up to 100 free events every year". So what are these free events, and why do we need another?

So to enable people to experience 3 days of 'joy', our family has to endure two weeks of 7 days a week, 12 hours a day construction noise around 50m from our front window. That's HGVs driving up & down the road, constant reversing beeps from fork lifts & tractors, scaffolding poles crashing, pneumatic wrenches rattling, shouting etc etc. from 8am to 8pm. Every day. Even Sundays. Do you have all that near your house? Then there's the anti social behaviour during the festival, right outside our home - minicabs arriving, punters jumping out, chucking bottles and cans on the floor, having a quick p*ss against the wall, then off to the festival to have their 'joy'. Again & again, all afternoon & evening. For the whole bank holiday weekend. Guys having nitrous oxide parties in their cars, right outside our home at midnight, 1am. Do you have all that near your house? And then there's the strike afterwards, more construction noise for another week - 8am to 8pm, every day - then they disappear, leaving the park covered in fag butts, bottle tops, ring pulls, cable ties, cellophane filter tip tubes, disposable vapes, all usually trampled into the ground so that they are virtually impossible to remove. And then several months for the grass to almost recover enough for people to use again, except by then the summer is long gone. Do you really think a "chill pill" is going to miraculously resolve all this? Please, have some empathy for people who are really impacted by this event. I've nothing against festivals, but they need to be located in a suitable space, and a small public park close to residential homes isn't it.

That's odd, one of the claimed benefits of the Gala money is - "The site hire fee goes directly to supporting the delivery of the council’s Events service, which supports the delivery of up to 100 free-to-attend community events per year" I've asked for a list of these events, as without this I feel it can't realistically be used to justify the disruption. Can anyone name even 10 of these events? 5?

Gosh, that all sounds so familiar! Southwark are constantly holding up their Outdoor Events Policy as proof of process, but then constantly allow exceptions when things aren't quite done correctly. Point in case, Gala's licence application - extract from the Consultation Findings Report - "The GALA team formally submitted their application to hold GALA 2025 to the council on the 7 October 2024. It is usually a requirement that applications for larger scale events are submitted with a minimum of 9 months to process them, but discretion can be applied if there are mitigating circumstances. 8.4 of the Outdoor Events Policy clarifies that processing applications received outside the stated lead-in times is at the Council's discretion. In this case: • The council were aware that Assembled Gala were preparing an application for the event to take place in 2025 in advance of their submission date, with operational discussions already taking place • GALA festival has been taking place in Peckham Rye Park since 2018 – less time is needed regarding event planning than if it were a new event • The GALA team already have a Premises Licence in place for this event (this is a pre- requisite for the Event Licence to be issued), so no time needed to be factored in for a premises licence application and decision-making process" So despite the fact that there would need to be major planning decisions due to the change of site access, they didn't think Gala needed to adhere to the same rules as everyone else? Makes me wonder what other rules they are exempted from... On a similar note, has anyone received a Resident Communication letter, containing the contact details for issues? We haven't, and we live directly opposite the site on Colyton Rd. They were supposedly distributed on 29/4...

Beard

The Parkrun organisers have had to make the decision to cancel their events this week & next week, and probably the week after. "Having inspected the start/finish area now that the Gala festival build is underway, we have concluded that it will be impossible for the event to go ahead safely." So another assurance / promise broken by the organisers, who were adamant that the extended area wouldn't affect the Parkrun. I'm just hoping this will open a few more eyes to what's going on...

Loner

Rotas

Just to clarify, this isn't the same cherry as last year, it's in the corner by the path that runs down to the crossroads of FHR / Colyton / Dunstans. It hasn't been an issue previously because the perimeter wasn't as large... I'm sure it must have been noticed & flagged during the various planning meetings, walkabouts etc and there is an ecological resolution planned that will avoid any damage to the tree. After all, Gala pride themselves on their environmental stance, being "nestled in the park" and everything... 🤦

I've sent an email to the council about it & other related issues, but I won't hold my breath. There's no representation from the council on site, so Gala can & will do whatever they want. Highly unlikely they'll ever be punished / fined because they've got the council under their thumb, and the council are so starved of funds they'd never risk biting the hand that feeds them. Also worth noting that in the consultation findings report there's a statement in the section "If the event goes ahead" - "At least 28 days prior to event taking place / Resident information letter posted to properties around the park (giving confirmed event information and resident ‘hotline’ number)" Anyone received one of these yet? No? So are Gala in breach of the council's Outdoor Events Policy? Probably. Will there be any consequence? Nah. Lastly, image attached of the cherry tree in the SW corner of the site, with white lines sprayed on the grass presumably indicating the position of the (very high) metal wall. Looks like the branch might get in the way, however will they resolve that....?

And already two huge HGVs have made their way up Colyton Rd, despite assurances at the meetings that they would be routed from the top. Love it how they make these statements to placate the locals, then just do whatever they want because there's no one from the council watching. Or caring.