Harringay online

Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!

I quote, link at the bottom.

Wireless Festival is destroying our park

We are the Friends of Finsbury Park and we are fundraising to protect one of London’s most historic parks by stopping Wireless Festival and the damage and misery it causes.

Wireless Festival is too big for Finsbury Park

Wireless Festival is a massive multi-million pound music event organised by Festival Republic (Live Nation). It is almost impossible to comprehend its vast scale and the impact it has on Finsbury Park. Last year’s Wireless Festival covered almost one third of the size of the Park, surrounded by an oppressive 8ft high green metal barrier to keep Park users out, in some areas stretching as far as the eye could see. 

Many local residents don't have gardens so the Park serves as a vital outdoor amenity, and as events such as Wireless Festival take weeks to set up and take down the public is denied access to what should be public space. The  carriageway in the park is also plagued by large vehicles driving to and from the site, which are wholly inappropriate for a park environment.

Last year’s Wireless Festival, which was held over two summer weekends, attracted crowds of 50,000 per day causing massive disruption, damage, excessive noise, and antisocial behaviour in streets surrounding the Park. The fence of a local school playground had to be wrapped in protective plastic as festival goers were urinating through it while children were in school.

We are not against Wireless Festival in itself, but its sheer size and scale is totally inappropriate to Finsbury Park. We are happy to see events staged which don't involve the closure of one third of the park in high summer, are more inclusive of the local community, and benefit the Park itself.

Taking Action

We are launching a legal challenge to stop Haringey Council staging Wireless Festival and similar major events in Finsbury Park. 

Finsbury Park is a public park that was formed by virtue of the Finsbury Park Act 1857; it is registered as a Grade II Historic Park and Garden and is also Metropolitan Open Land.  

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Tags for Forum Posts: finsbury park, finsbury park events

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Most of us don't want to stop the concerts, but to scale them down to what they used to be (ie smaller and less frequent, like the Fleadh which Finsbury Park was known for hosting for a number of years).  I think a lot of people don't realise how much anti-social behaviour happens around the Hackney and Islington side of the park when Wireless takes place (urinating and defecating in people's gardens, as well as urinating into the primary school playground - fair grounds for being a nimby if this happens to you!!!).  Where we live often the noise is really loud - fine for a few hours, but difficult for 3 consecutive days/evenings, especially if you work from home, need to study or have young children who need to sleep.  If we knew there would only be one or two concerts a year, that would be fine, but currently the council seems to be granting more and more licences to concert organisers, so unless we take a stand now we could end up with several more weekends taken up with concerts, and weeks with large areas of the park fenced off for set up/take down every year (a few years ago the council changed its events policy to increase number of event days allowed from 5 a year to 15 a year!!!)

The council had carte blanche anyway - disagreements at any level, personal or judicial have not as a consequence increased the council's powers. In pointing this out I'm not taking a point of view for or against.

tried that, for many years, but not got anywhere (in particular at the council meeting where they increased the number of events allowed per year - there was a lot of opposition to this, but they ignored that)

How much opposition is there though? Maybe what a few dozen people out of hundreds of thousands?!

I am glad the judicial review failed.

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