Transcript

Transcript

call for consumption on the premises between 10 a.m and 8 p.m and also provision of regulated entertainment live and recorded music between 10 a.m and 8 p.m. The application was advertised as required and this resulted in an agreement with environmental services noise and nuisance team and the agreement is detailed on page paragraph 7 of the report chair and we also received three objections although one was rejected the second one was withdrawn. The only one that you're considering tonight is one objection and that is in terms of public nuisance and prevention of crime and disorder. The objector has listed their concerns in the report chair. We didn't receive any objection from other responsible authorities. The applicant has volunteered measures in appendix detailed in appendix a which can be added to the license if members are minded to grant it as conditions of the license or members can also modify these conditions if they consider such steps appropriate after hearing all the evidence tonight. The copies of their representations, the objections received chair were forwarded to the subcommittee and also the applicant. So the committee tonight has the following options to consider which are appropriate for promoting the licensing objectives and one is to either grant the application as requested, modify the conditions of the application or add new ones or to reject the all application or part of it and this is the application as I understand it chair. I'm happy to answer any any questions. The only other thing I forgot to mention is we did have this event last year at the same premises so this is not a new event. Last year the applicant did apply for a license but it was time limited for one event. Thank you, thank you very much. Um Councillor French. Just small point of correction in Miss Sharkey's um preamble and she's always on point just small one it's for the 14th of September not the 12th. I think all right that was oh yes I do apologize um um Councillor that was the the one on the 12th uh was last year uh when the event was held at the same location and this year that's quite yeah that's correct this year is the 14th of September but last year when they held the event it was on the 12th of September. Okay I just wanted to just in case anyone from the public's watching and there was confusion but thank you for the correction appreciate it. Yes sorry thank you. Thank you that's that's really helpful um I do have a point of clarification actually um but so the the event was held the event's been held this year but on and on what type of licenses I'm just interested in why yeah well is this a different type of license that's been applied for this year was it a temporary event license last year? Yeah so yeah thank you uh chair so last year it was like just a time limited premises license and people can do that and maybe the applicant may be able to explain why they did that maybe they wanted to test the event and see how it went but this year they are actually now applying for an indefinite license um but it will be only for two days only within that specified period so if this license is if members are minded to grant it it will carry on until you know for the life of of that business. Thank you that's that's really helpful um are there any other um clarification questions from the the subcommittee? Thank you thank you okay so in that case um I now invite uh the applicant to address the subcommittee um um hello welcome um um Mr Mclean you'll have five minutes to to speak to the committee so basically um I mean you've you've seen the the papers and you've seen the objections as well I suppose what's helpful to us is um explaining that why you're applying for this how you answer those objections and how you can sort of uh reassure us that this would be uh this would be a good event for Wormsworth. Hi my name is Damien I'm the event manager of Taste of the Caribbean um food and drink drink festival you know I thank you to say thanks to the subcommittee for this hearing and also want to thank um the local resident who actually made the objection because it definitely shows that you know he cares about his community he cares about his park and just wants to make sure that the right things are being done so um I'm thankful to be able to give some information just to give more clarity and understanding to the event and things that we have in place to make sure that the event is safe for everybody Taste of the Caribbean food and drink festival is exactly that it's a food and drink festival it's a family orientated event that welcomes people of all ages races religions and sexual orientations to a family event to really enjoy caribbean culture and caribbean food it's also an event that caters for a demographic of people that are often overlooked during the festival season festival season in the UK has gone to you know massive levels there's festivals every weekend but there's a demographic of people that are often overlooked and that is families that is people over the age of 60 you know that is people with disabilities Taste of the Caribbean food and drink festival is one of the only festivals of this size that the youngest member of the family can attend and also the oldest member of the family can attend and they can all have a great family day out the event consists of a small um let's say a medium um live music stage um that only caters for um tribute bands such as ub40 and bombali tribute bands it doesn't have we don't have any established um music performers that people from far and wide will be coming to see is literally just tribute acts to give that kind of nostalgia and give that caribbean feeling we have lots of um street food traders representing different islands of the caribbean we also have dessert traders and also non-food traders with market stalls selling everything from books to clothes toys jewelry um etc we have fun fair rides not any large fun for a ride just maybe the small fun fair rides for the small kiddies we also have a free um kids activities area where we have circus skills puppet shows storytelling arts and crafts and we make sure like i said we keep it family orientated and make sure there's lots of things um for the kids to do we're now in our fourth year and we've grown year on year in 2023 when we first did the event in woman of park we had seven events that year this year 2024 we're now up to 17 festivals right now we're actually in the middle of the season we've completed nine events so far so over a four-year period and over 20 festivals we have never had a serious incident we've never had to call um emergency services about any type of anti-social behavior we've never had any reports of any anti-social behavior before an event after the event within the park itself or the site that the event is being held within the you know the surrounding streets of the event afterwards we've never had any reports of anti-social behavior or any reason to ever call emergency services the event doesn't go on till till late it finishes at 8 p.m when it is still bright the sun actually doesn't set for another two hours after the actual event itself ends we we work with the the sag group you know the sag for Wandsworth and i know you know it'd be with the Wandsworth um council they also work with the king's council and the sun council so we sometimes do all of the second meetings at the same time we have meetings with all of the different police licensing um for those boroughs at the same time and we've never ever told anybody no we've never said any objections any anything that the police have ever asked for anything that the subcommittee has asked for we've always agreed to we've always adhered to we like to take on more that information and work with the different councils to make sure that the event is as safe as possible and as well run as possible um for the local residents for the community and to make sure that we're here um every single year um this event did take place in women apart last year it was a very successful event very well attended um we got amazing feedback um from the local community and once again there was no anti-social behavior whatsoever so i can definitely assure um the local resident that made the objection that you know this is not really an event that has any type of history for anti-social behavior and all of the um requirements and requests that are put in place by the police for example um the amount of sis sia security that we have um having the cctv van and you know the full site covered by cctv all of the the um the rules and regulations around drinking and alcohol like i said we we we we agree to all of the conditions set forward by the police and the side committee so i can assure that we do our due diligence and every step has been taken to make sure that this is a well-run event and i think that's about it from me thank you thank you that was very comprehensive um okay so um at this stage um obviously you know that the objector um president by the name paul hargree didn't able to be here but both council french and i have read um read his objection so i'm going to combine two bits now so basically do it counselor uh french do you have any questions for the applicant i do um how many people does the event tend to a trap um different sites different cities attract different people and the festival season this year has been really hit by bad weather um so the bad weather that we've been having in the uk has really hit a lot of the festival so numbers are down on previous years um the license that we we've applied for enables us to have up to 4999 people on site at any one time but none of our sites are seeing those kind of um numbers this year just because um people are very cautious about the money that they're spending um due to due to the weather um so for example no that's fine so just to just to come in i i kind of thank you i like the flavor but i just have some really direct questions what was the amount of people that attended the site last year this particular site do you have the numbers for the last year's engagement i don't i don't i don't have them to answer okay thank you because i think for me that alleviates to understand i can appreciate anywhere else in the world or other sites because this had been here last year it just would have been for me useful to know what the attendance was and that just just the background to alleviate the concerns from mr hargreeves about some of like lots of people on xyz but if you don't have the numbers it won't have any bearing on my decision thank you thank you um i i've got a couple of questions to ask um but just to i guess to get an understanding of the type of event and it's kind of reassuring i suppose that you've done this now you say this will be the fourth time in this location that's the second time in this location for a second time in this location yes okay but it sounds like you've done a number of these events you've done it a second time in this location so talk to me about it sounds very family orientated of course um what sort of things are you doing for instance to make sure people are leaving at a reasonable time and aren't hanging around um if there's alcohol being sold until eight how do you know people aren't going to be lingering in the park until nine ten eleven twelve you know we just don't have that demographic um the demographic is is families so literally as the event finishes everyone leaves and and towards because people comes from so early like people like families come with their children from 10 11 they're there so it's quite a long day um by by 6 37 i would say 80 percent of the people have already left the site anyway because it's a food and drink so the majority of people stay for like two to three hours you do get some people who will actually stay for the whole day um but by six i would say from like about 435 onwards people are are steady leaving by 630 um the majority of people have left um by seven by 7 30 um there might only be a couple hundred people still left on the site and like i said it is families as soon as the event finishes everyone leaves and goes home we just don't have a demographic of people that lawyers are in the park afterwards thank you that's helpful and i'm assuming you've mentioned um security and things like that how big if you're talking about what nearly 5 000 people how big is your team how many people are we talking about in your your setup okay so um the the conditions and agreement with the police is is 200 so one one sia security guard to every 200 people so it's one to 200. uh so 25. i can't do that math sorry how 25 25 yeah thank you thank you that's helpful um again i'm it seems fairly fairly straightforward to be honest what you're what you're what you're suggesting um and the reason uh you know desperately trying to come up with questions because i'm i am conscious that the resident had an issue and i want to i want to make sure that that those issues are addressed council French and i i just want to know is there a particular reason why now you'd like this to be ongoing as opposed to applying for like a temporary license every year or so forth like um identifying this particular site to be a place that will be indefinitely um i'm just mindful once if we were in we're minded as mashok he said to to agree to the license it it's it's indefinite or forever as long as the business say when we were making the applications um last year um the licensing departments um like i said when with this site i'm i deal with like three different councils at the same time um so the licensing departments because it was first time the event was coming to these boroughs and it wasn't aware of the event they preferred that we only applied for a license that covered us for just that one year after they'd all now attended the event you know we've had licensed departments come down we've had the police come down so now that's so much we've so the food safety will come down so now now that's so much um departments of the council have cut i've attended these events senior events are really happy with the events it was the licensing departments who actually advised us to now apply for a license that is ongoing so that we don't have to go through um the every year we don't have to go through the application process every single year so it's actually the council licensing departments that advise us to do it this year this way sorry moving forward thank you that makes sense thank you um miss sharking thank you chair i just because obviously damion has mentioned the licensing department i think it's it's important that i explain that further um my understanding is through the safety advisory group meet you know when you meet all day because the licensing department don't make that decision it's through all the responsible authorities um just to clarify the responsible authorities that would probably have that pre-consultation and they've advised last year that you just do it temporary to test to see if there are any issues and then come back once you evaluate your event last year so it's like the responsible authority that plays you know noise and uses team you know trading standards or it's a group of people yes correct sir yes okay that's pretty helpful i will go to to mr bishop but i wanted to ask you something um um mashaki so but for last year's event i just want to confirm there were no complaints there were no issues nothing's been raised in both environmental health or the police is that correct to to my knowledge we did deal with some complaints but they were not warranted they were vexatious um that's my understanding you know the complaints came in and they were investigated they would know they were vexatious um that's very helpful thank you very much mr bishop yes just following up on um what uh miss sharky said um it's very important to remember that where you've got a premises license for an event like this with the sort of numbers involved um if there were to be problems at the event this year then obviously the uh license could be reviewed and therefore you wouldn't have the license going forward ad infinitum because you'd be able to review it and reconsider it in a way i don't doubt um that's um hopefully not going to happen but that is available if there were to be a problem in terms of the management of the event that's very helpful thank you um thank you mr bishop that's really useful information i don't um envisage there will be problems either um but because um damion i'm you were unable for me to share how many people were there last year it just that you that information is very useful for me to understand how big of the scale potentially there could be more people potentially more problems um so mr bishop saying that there's that right of review gives me much more confidence that should anything go awry that we're able to mitigate by coming back here and having a further discussion potentially so just to say the question i asked was to do with potential problems before where we're at now and to ensure that we can kind of if anything goes wrong rain it back in in the future a future meeting i think we were roughly in a region of like about 3 000 people but because i can't tell you the exact accurate figure that's why i didn't want to say anything but it was it's in the region of 3 000 people last year that would make sense to me um i was just going to say that obviously the other aspect of the safety advisory group being involved because they obviously approved the um noise management plan and the various plans that go into this um is that even if they were concerned at the last minute there was a problem they could take action under their own authority under their own legislation to deal with that particular problem my expectation and i've experienced this elsewhere is that um the damian and his team would say look okay this is you this is what your issue is this is what we can do and so solve the problem and then they'll be happy again but ultimately they do have those powers and i have done research on that in the past certainly the far authority powers are quite significant in terms of closing down things but i don't think that would ever happen in this situation uh not with the with the history that you've been presented with well that within that within the application itself that we've put forward we do still have to submit an event management plan to the sag group each year that that needs to be approved so we still need to send over the medical plan security plan event management plan um noise management plan that still has to go over um a certain amount of months beforehand the police and licensing also have power of veto as part of the application as well so um it's literally just the kind of application process and the balloon notices and the newspaper adverts etc etc but almost everything else that we do we still have to do year on year that's really helpful thank you um okay so are there any more questions from subcommittee for the applicant i think that's me too um well in that case um it was a slightly truncated meeting um and that now concludes this part of the meeting the decisions reasons and any legal guidance given during the subcommittee's discussion has formed that their decision will be confirmed in writing together with information about any rights of appeal within five working days and members of the licensing subcommittee the democratic services officer and the legal advisor will now join a separate confidential meeting to make their decision but uh mr clean i wanted to thank you for coming along and taking time to explain your events to us tonight thank you all right cheers thank you so much goodbye everyone thank you see you again for the best