British Summer Time (BST) Hyde Park is always a massive occasion. It’s the only major festival that’s held in the central London park each year and since launching in 2013 it has welcomed enormous stars from The Rolling Stones to Adele. This year, it’ll see performances from the likes of Duran, Duran, Lewis Capaldi, Mumford & Sons and Pitbull.
Normally, the fest takes place across three weekends, with over 500,000 people descending upon Hyde Park for nine different concerts. Now, it’s about to get even bigger. Last week, BST was given permission to welcome 75,000 more attendees.
Westminster City Council Licensing Sub Committee has given the Royal Parks formal permission to boost the capacity of all nine BST concerts to 69,999 people. That would take the festival’s total capacity up to 630,000 – an increase of 75,000.
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Previously, BST only had consent for seven gigs with 64,999 capacity and two with 49,999 capacity. Altogether, that adds up to just under 555,000 people. Royal Parks hopes that the expansion will help the summer series to ‘remain competitive in the market for artists’.
The Royal Parks said: ‘As a charity we are operating in a challenging economic environment. It costs around £75m a year to manage the parks. The charity raises around 85 per cent of this money itself, with the remaining 15 per cent coming from the Government.
‘In addition to generating vital funds for The Royal Parks, BST Hyde Park provides significant wider economic benefit, contributing millions of pounds to the London economy.’
Permission was granted in spite of a number of complaints from locals. One written objection stated: ‘I am afraid dispersing concert goers are not well-behaved and run through the residential streets screaming and alas urinating. Hyde Park was destined for all the enjoy – not to be taken over by paying guests with no respect for the environment.’
The Met Police also expressed concern over the license change. Before the application was approved it said: ‘The Metropolitan Police, as a responsible authority, object to this application as it is our belief that if granted the application would undermine the Licensing Objectives.
‘There is insufficient detail contained within the operating schedule to promote the licensing objectives. It is for these reasons that we object to this application.’
In its application, the organisation said that there are strict noise controls in place for BST and it revealed that last year, there were just 15 unique noise complaints in relation to the festival. Besides capacity, nothing else on the license has changed – the events will still finish at 10.30pm from Monday to Saturday and 10pm on Sundays.
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