Residents’ anger over country park ‘rave’
FAMILIES living near a popular beauty spot say they were kept awake by a ‘non-stop rave’ over the weekend.
Fed-up residents took to social media on Sunday to complain that loud music had been pumping out of Reddish Vale Country Park for 24 hours, making it almost impossible to sleep.
One resident said the music was so loud that they initially assumed there was another concert at Lancashire County Cricket Ground, after the sound from the Rihanna concert travelled across Greater Manchester in June.
Another Tweeted: “When is this music going to stop from Reddish Vale?”
The Express set out to investigate the noise and visited the Vale, finding that the ‘rave’ was in fact a small group of around 14 men and one woman with a generator and sound system. Their small camp, in the Vale between Willow Grove Cemetery and Reddish Vale Golf Club, was littered with empty laughing gas canisters and beer bottles.
Our reporter and photographer were asked to leave after approaching the camp, but not before one reveller explained they were ‘just a group of like-minded people who were only in the Vale because they couldn’t go anywhere else’.
However, people living nearby were not amused by the din.
One resident, in nearby Brinnington, who asked not to be named, said: “We’ve got a child who has just had surgery and she’s not had any sleep and neither have we.
“It started on Saturday lunchtime and it’s still going on.
“When you phone the police, they tell you it’s an Environmental Health noise abatement issue and when you phone Environmental Health, they tell you it’s a breach of the peace for the police to deal with.
“I’ve pretty much reached the end of my tether. It’ll stop for ten minutes here and there but otherwise it’s been constant, for the past 36 hours.
“The whole estate has been kept awake. If they don’t stop soon I think there will be a vigilante group going down there to sort it out.”
Elsewhere, residents living three miles away in Heaton reported music.
Greater Manchester Police said they attended the park on Sunday morning following complaints but did not find anyone there. Moor hearing also the