Events with capacity for up to 50,000 people are set to be hosted at the park this summer, reports Grace Howarth, Local Democracy Reporter

Part of Finsbury Park fenced off for one of its major events

A concerned park friends group has published an open letter and launched a petition to protect Finsbury Park, saying Haringey Council is “not measuring” the impact of events and concerts.

Friends of Finsbury Park co-chair Bethany Anderson said the council was “in bed with corporations” when it came to events, and the park’s ecosystem and users were bearing the brunt.

The council recently signed a five-year deal with major event holders such as Krankbrother and Festival Republic.

Wireless Festival, which the park has hosted for several years, and Festival Republic, both have an attendee capacity of up to 50,000. Both these and Krankbrother are set to be hosted by the park over weekends in July and August.

Bethany claims the 110-acre park cannot handle this amount of attendees, stating that years ago events were “capped at 30,000” and were smaller and “community facing” but have since been “pushed out”.

She said: “We’re a public park, we’re taking away people’s front gardens and back gardens for nearly a month.

“Even though our moral stance is that we don’t think public parks are the right place for big corporate private events, we would be more understanding if we were making a killing of money from it and it was giving us the best park ever.”

Bethany said the park had a “prolific problem” with drug dealing and gangs at the entrances and a “massive problem” with crime at the athletics track.

In January, the Metropolitan Police issued a statement saying they planned to “design out crime in the area”.

In response, a council spokesperson said public amenities and facilities stayed open during the events schedule and “large swathes of park land and grass” were “openly accessible and available” to park users.

The spokesperson added that events boosted local businesses with “millions in extra trade” and brought in £1.2million in income to the council each year “which is reinvested into the park”. This has enabled the staging of community events and new facilities such as the park’s newly-opened skate plaza.

Bethany said the friends group surveyed 140 local businesses and 70% reported “no increase in business” from the events and quite a lot “saw a downturn or had to shut”. This, Bethany believed, was due to events not allowing attendees to bring food inside.

She also said the group didn’t see the monetary benefits of the deals the council had made, saying issues with park facilities such as lighting and toilets were common.

The level of “ecological depletion” was also highlighted, Bethany said if the park had to have events, one space should be chosen and the north side “shouldn’t be used”.

She said: “There is a level of ecological depletion when you hold an event in a space, we can’t do lots of tree planting, our wildlife leaves that area of the park.”

Bethany said the group worked with 50 birdwatchers and once events hit, such as Krankbrother on the north side, a lot of the nesting birds left.

The council spokesperson said hosting events and “staging some of the biggest names in music” was a point of pride and tradition for Haringey, adding that it took seriously its responsibility to maintain the park.

They said: “Extra measures will be in place for 2024. We have introduced air quality monitors in the park, which will provide us with a baseline of the air quality throughout the major events schedule and the entire year. The results of this monitoring will inform if any further action is needed.

“Krankbrother have engaged an independent ecologist to ensure best practice around nature conservation is being met by them. Council colleagues and tree officers will also be on site to check that their obligations are being adhered to in the park.”

The petition is available online:
Visit change.org/p/we-want-our-park-back-stop-krankbrother-hijacking-finsbury-park-s-northside

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