Petition asking Southwark not to grant the Gala license again from us traumatised residents.

[ms_wilson]

https://chng.it/YXCH5XXVMY

[fishboy]

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 an extra c.18,000 trampling & littering the park...

- 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?

Edited Wednesday at 13:36 by fishboy

[malumbu]

Thanks for explaining.  Irrespective of issues 'trauma' is a strong word and the original post should have actually explained the issues.  As fishboy has.  I've got an aversion to just receiving links.

[jazzer]

The original post also dramatically changed the wording of their petition but failed to state what they'd done, try Parliamentary procedure 

[first mate]

16 hours ago, fishboy said:

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? 

I think the request should be to relocate the event to a more suitable site, that would be a win win. I recall that Peckham Common was felt to be too small, which I find surprising. I now wonder if what that really means is less opportunity to expand in future?

I agree fishboy, I anticipate a Gala request for 6 days and possibly an even larger footprint.