Glasto Organisers ‘must do more on noise’
THE organisers of the Glastonbury Festival have been ordered to take decisive action to reduce unwanted noise and ensure proper crowd control at next year’s event.
Mendip District Council, which issues the licence for the festival, has published a ‘de-brief’ report following this year’s event, which raises a number of concerns about how things were managed.
Councillors and local residents raised concerns when the report came before the council’s scrutiny board on Tuesday.
The festival organisers, Glastonbury
Festival Events Ltd, will provide a written response in the next couple of months.
The report stated that the festival had been “well planned and managed”. However, it identified the need for improvement in three key areas:
» more work was needed to “address excessive loudness and low frequency noise”, including monitoring and time restrictions
» a new strategy was needed to control the density of camping in the staff and performer areas to reduce fire risk and prevent “conflict between vehicles and tents”
» work was needed to achieve “improvements to crowd distribution across the site” to prevent crushes and other injuries.
Nick Hall, who lives in Pilton near the festival site, told the meeting: “Despite this council making recommendations after the 2017 and 2019 festivals regarding night-time noise and off-site noise management, this year proved to be even worse.
“This debrief report glosses over substantial complaints made to the council.
“My perception is that licence conditions were breached from Wednesday (onwards). Loud amplified music continued until 1am on Friday.
“Over the weekend period, there were multiple complaints about noise going on until 4am.”
Caroline Griffiths, who also lives in the village, said she was so frustrated she rang the village helpline. She said she lost sleep, and that affected her work.
The concerns were shared by several councillors, including regular festival attendee Michael Gay.
He said: “When Arcadia finished performing at the south-east corner, there were crushes. There was also a bad crush on Thursday evening when an inappropriate venue was chosen for what’s known as TBAX – that is, people don’t know who’s going to be on.”
Cllr Chris Inchley, who chaired the meeting, said: “I have to say, this year I had constituents contact me about the noise of the festival – even the local MP did the same.”
He added that some people told him they had felt unsafe at times.
Cllr Heather Shearer, portfolio holder for community health and neighbourhood services, said the festival site was large enough to accommodate all ticket-holders, but more needed to be done to control crowds.
Marietta Gill, the council’s public protection manager, said: “There were definitely issues around the distribution and movement of people. Some acts were a lot more popular than was expected, and GFEL recognises that work needs to be done on that.”
Councillor Nick Cottle, however, suggested that the increase in noise could be attributed at least in part to different weather conditions during the festival.
Cllr Damon Hooton complained that the festival was effectively being subsidised by taxpayers since fees relating to the licence were set at a low level by the Home Office.
The Home Office is expected to launch a consultation on fees councils can charge in relation to licensed events in January.
Ms Shearer said she was confident that the issues raised in the report would be taken seriously and proactively addressed.
Glastonbury Festival Events Ltd was approached by the Local Democracy Reporting Service after the council’s report was published, but did not respond to a request for comment.