Party Vibe

if you know where the next festival is you can find out the local Council’s address and contact their licensing/environmental health department directly

they are obliged by law to publicly state their the acceptable noise levels in each area (it can vary in “bands” depending how close the venue is to residential areas).

That said, I don’t even think these have changed all that much in recent years. What may have recently changed is laws about people working in the industry (engineers, DJ’s, stewards) and how much noise they can be exposed to.

As bizzare as it may seem to punters, It is even possible that people on the crew are responsible for the sound being turned down – workers in this industry have their goodwill of often exploited and in this country “health and safety” regularly used as a “bargaining point” or a way of getting back at the “bosses” rather than to genuinely protect staff and customers.

TBH I think the only thing what would make a real difference is a drop in attendance and ticket sales at a few festivals and some of them folding (like is already happening). if this starts causing a genuine financial loss to the local economy where the festivals happen(ed), then maybe residents could be encouraged to be more supportive in future…

do you have any verifiable numbers for this?

I would have thought given the location TBH the most revenue would have gone to Membury and Theale motorway services and not much else, festival goers at electronic dance music festivals tend not to spend that much on food 😉

Unfortunately West Berks is one of the richest areas in the Berks/Oxon/Bucks region (an area I am very familiar with as I spent 20+ years of my life there!) and the richer, older locals could easily say they don’t want or need this “extra” business. I suspect a lot of the other business generated via the festival also results in the money going back to London or other regions such as Reading.

OTOH a fair few people on here are themselves locals to West Berkshire and >18 years old – they are therefore eligible to pay Council Tax and also to have a say in their local affairs.

I did a bit of googling and West Berks granted glade a 5 year license with “limited monitoring” (whatever that means) in 2007. However the amount they actually paid for it appears to have been classified as “RESTRICTED-COMMERCIAL”.

This is unfortunately (in days of otherwise increasingly “open” government) common practice and both the Councils and the promoters collude with this as the promoters don’t want to “help competitors”.

As a ballpark figure though a normal full PEL in West Berks (for something like a 1500 capacity nightclub) is about £635, whilst in Reading a PEL for an Elton John concert at the Madjeski stadium cost £25 000

I suspect Glade (capacity 12 000) would be somewhere in the middle of these figures. Also they would have to pay TVP for the Police costs..

However, even £10 000 doesn’t give much of a “profit” when the potential costs are taken into account. For instance although it would be wholly unfair to expect the Glade organisers to have paid “extra” in 2007 when the floods occured the presence of 12,000 extra people (nearly the entire population of Stowmarket!) , with many unfamiliar to the area, would have added to the burden of the emergency operations..

even when everything goes perfectly theres loads of extra traffic and upheaval in the local area.. also in some cases extra incidents for NHS to deal with (I can’t obviously say too much detail but a very reliable source has told me one year Glade caused a lot of various casualties – no deaths but enough to require multiple ambulance deployments)

TBH I think in the long term both Glade and Reading should relocate to sites South of Reading where there is ample space and it faces on to a motorway / industrial estate rather than residential area, and you could crank up the volume as much as you wanted…