Features
All Clear For Hyde Park Summer
Westminster councilors gave the go-ahead for
The park’s license to host events came under review Feb. 17, following a growing number of complaints from well-heeled Mayfair residents.
LN chief ops officer John Probyn said the council’s decision is good news for the thousands of Londoners and visitors from overseas who’ll now be able to enjoy a programme that includes
“We have listened to the concerns of the residents and will continue to do so while working closely with Westminster Council and the Royal Parks,” Probyn told Pollstar.
That will include trialing a new noise-reduction system and the monitoring of sound levels.
In 2013, the number of concerts at Hyde Park each year will be cut from 13 to nine and the venue’s capacity will be reduced from 80,000 to 65,000 – and, in some cases, only 50,000.
Mayfair Residents’ Association vice-chairman Mike Dunn said he feels the council’s restrictions did not go far enough and did not address the problem of concert noise.
“It’s pretty bad. There are two issues for us – the number of concerts and the noise they’re allowed to make,” he said. “If you sit here with the windows open on a hot day, you can hear every word.”
People living near the park wanted the maximum noise level reduced from 75 decibels to 73.
In the lead up to the council’s license hearing, there’d been newspaper reports saying the shows could be “under threat.”
London Mayor Boris Johnson said he was “extremely concerned” about the situation and hoped it could be resolved.
“I want to see Madonna in Hyde Park,” he told London’s Evening Standard.
A week before the license hearing, the Standard had irked Probyn by running an inaccurate story saying
“I told them what I thought of them,” he said. “I got an apology from the reporter, who said he’d been misinformed.
“It’s a sensitive time for us because we’re in the middle of confirming acts for the summer and it doesn’t help when there are stories like this.”
It was also sensitive time for Westminster councilors to read about another mega show that would likely cause further complaints from the millionaire neighbourhood.
The council was already looking at cutting the number of concerts allowed each year from 13 to six, lowering the noise levels and reducing crowds from a maximum of 80,000 people to 50,000 on safety grounds.
Probyn says he thinks the Stones story was due to the misreporting of comments made at a meeting concerning the Olympics and the live entertainment being staged in London during the summer.
The sound levels allowed in Hyde Park are already lower than any other venue in the country. Further reducing them could discourage some acts from playing there.
In November, The Independent said noise restrictions were the reason
The story was dismissed by RHCP agent Emma Banks, who said “many factors” were behind the act’s decision to play Knebworth.
RHCP is promoted by
The company has a close relationship with the Hertfordshire country house and stages the UK leg of its annual Sonisphere Festival on its grounds.
This year, Live Nation will be able to run 13 commercial concerts in the parks, an increase on the eight or nine days – including Wireless Festival and Hard Rock Calling – that it has run at the landmark location.
London is pulling out all the stops to use the Olympics to reinforce its position as a tourist destination.
The concerts will get £100,000 worth of marketing support from City Hall, plus a poster campaign throughout the London Underground network, potentially reaching 5 million passengers per day.