London councils go head to head in court over noise from festival
Wandsworth Council is to take legal action against neighbouring Lambeth Council over its backing for a three-day summer music festival on Clapham Common.
Wandsworth said it would ask Camberwell Green magistrates court to impose new conditions on a licence recently granted by Lambeth allowing the SW4 Festival to be staged over the August bank holiday weekend.
According to Wandsworth, local residents claim that the festival has become too noisy and should not last three days, with loud music starting each day at lunchtime and continuing as late as 11pm.
A number of residents are to appear as witnesses to say the 2016 festival caused unreasonable disturbance following Lambeth’s decision to allow much louder music than in previous years.
Wandsworth said its application to magistrates would seek to restore permitted noise levels back to 2015 limits and to restrict the event to two days “so that local residents can enjoy at least one peaceful and noise-free day over the bank holiday weekend”.
At a hearing held by a Lambeth licensing sub-committee in December – when the event organisers were applying for permission to stage the festival again in 2017 – Wandsworth formally objected to the plans. These objections were “brushed aside”, Wandsworth claimed.
Cllr Jonathan Cook, Wandsworth’s environment spokesman, said: “I’m afraid that Lambeth have left us no alternative but to seek a resolution of this issue in the courts.
“We raised some reasonable points at their committee meeting which could have been easily agreed to that would have allowed the festival to go ahead without causing the major headache that residents in both boroughs experienced last year.
“Sadly our points were totally ignored. Lambeth failed to agree any kind of compromise even though it would have directly benefited their own residents living around Clapham Common.”
Cllr Cook added: “We will now be using the appeals procedure laid out in the Licensing Act 2003 to try and overturn this decision. If we are successful then residents living near the common can look forward to a less intrusive and less disruptive event in the summer.
“Let me make it crystal clear. We are not objecting to the event being staged – our challenge relates only to the way it is being managed.”
A Lambeth Council spokesman said: “Legally we are unable to comment on this specific issue, but all events go through a rigorous process involving police, health and other partners, including neighbouring boroughs.”
Lambeth Council manages the whole of Clapham Common, although more than half of it is geographically located in the borough of Wandsworth.
