Chiswick Gunnersbury councillors - Ranjit Gill, Ron Mushiso and I - have been busily active, supporting residents and lobbying on their behalf, since before we were first elected in 2017. We've attended pre-festival briefings and debriefs after festivals, with Gunnersbury Park and with festival organisers, compiled long reports after festivals, and been persistent in pushing for improvements and changes on a range of issues. From the need for loos along the route and inside the park, not just in the event space, to getting reductions in decibel levels, and exposing, with very good and strong advice from a local resident, the need to manage the lower frequencies which cause the thump, thump, thump and vibrations that so many residents first complained about in 2018 and still do as it still isn't right. It has taken time, and dogged persistence. There have been some improvements but more are needed. One difficulty is that the park is now covered by a blanket licence that lasts in perpetuity. And, yes, councillors and residents lobbied hard against this licence, knowing it would limit opportunities to hold the park management team to account formally. Hounslow council (not Ealing) is the licensing authority and it is the planning authority covering Gunnersbury Park. Another difficulty is that solving one problem often leads to another. Noise complaints came predominantly from one direction so the stage was moved to face a different direction, hoping fewer people would be affected but there were still significant complaints. Time of day, weather and wind direction add complications; the prevailing wind here is westerly which, with the stage direction, means the sound is inevitably directed over Chiswick, Bedford Park and Acton; as one of you has noted above, sound is directed over Chiswick even when there is no wind. Councillors are sent a weather report just before festivals; I forward them to residents' associations and others so they have the context and can decide what to do to avoid the worst of it (though a suggestion a couple of years ago that residents could go away on festival weekends was not universally well-received, totally understandably). Councillors' and residents' persistence led to the licensing enforcement team being present throughout festivals last year and again this year, receiving complaints in real time influencing how the festival organisers respond including by organising decibel readings at residents' homes (though the reply is often that levels are within the agreed limit, frustrating those whose own decibel readers tell a different story). Councillor and resident persistence led to the suppression of some lower frequencies; new persistence will be about further suppression of the lower frequencies as it's still not right. Similar persistence led to more marshals along the route, briefed more efficiently, to deter festival-goers from using alleys, bins, doorways, fences, gardens, hedges, stairs, walkways to flats and walls as public loos. Litter picking has improved hugely in most places, but not all though a fast responsive team will go to a litter hot spot to clear it if alerted to it. There is now a break in the fence along the track leading from the north west gate into the park to the festival site so locals from Lionel Road North can get into the park without going on a long diversion and, yes, I am still lobbying for the route in for set-up and de-rig lorries to be from the south west (but there are land, transport, and safety issues making this a slow process). There are many other aspects of the impact on locals of festival life that councillors and residents have influenced and changed (such as the diversion of the E3 bus which I reported on earlier today).Unfortunately and disappointingly, there is always more to be done. The residents' line has not worked as well as it should, as residents experienced last weekend and now this weekend. It can be a very frustrating process and requires more persistence - and many more meetings - than many residents realise.Here's the noise report produced by a resident that provided residents and councillors with much-needed and much-appreciated background information with which to persuade the park team and festival organisers that they had to take noise impact seriously. And, yes, there is more work to be done on that, too. https://www.chiswickgunnersburyconservatives.org.uk/news/gunnersbury-park-festivals-understanding-noise-impact
Joanna Biddolph ● 98d