BGG injunction filed despite Gathering's co-operation and compliance.

south west | media and culture | opinion/analysis

Monday August 10, 2009 17:22

by adelayde

Detailed analysis of that Big Green High Court injunction in full

Further details with regards to the reasons for the injunction preventing the Big Green Gathering from going ahead by Mendip District Council reveals that despite repeated efforts by the Big Green Gathering, its directors and contractors to assuage the Council's fears by proving that they were indeed complying with the licensing requirements, the Council still went ahead with the injunction.

Summary of claimant and defendent

Section 5 of the application for injunction, contained the following alleged breeches of condition:

a. ... has failed to provide a Fire Safety Management Strategy, a Fire Safety Risk Assessment or the relevant certification in relation to fire safety equipment.

This appears to have been a complete red herring as the BGG had contracted Midland Fire Services for the event and no objections had been raised during the licence hearing of the 30th June; in actual fact the Fire Authority (Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue) made no representation to the Council during this hearing, they only made these assertions on the 23rd July.

Midland Fire Services has been employed by the Big Green for several years now and that there have never been any serious fire issues at the Big Green Gathering. Midland Fire Services had previously been highly praised for their efficiency and ability by officers in the county fire brigade. In fact Midland Fire Services, who have previously covered events such as the Reading and Leeds Rock, WOMAD and VIrgin Music festivals, as well as VE and VJ Day celebrations, the Royal Military Taboo and the Silver Jubilee celebrations, made this statement to the Council:

"We are specialists in the provision of fire protection and safety services for all types of outdoor events; large and small. We have over 10 years experience in providing such services, and have had the privilege to have been associated with many prestigious national events, major rock and music festivals. We have invested heavily in appropriate equipment and vehicles for the role. Our Managing Director, Mr. Robin Crane is acknowledged as one of the leading specialists in event fire safety in the UK, and has written a large number of papers on the subject. He has been the site fire officer for one of Britain's leading rock festivals for 9 years, dealing with all aspects of fire safety and emergency response."

b. ... has failed to obtain a road closure order.

As already discussed in the article at http://bristol.indymedia.org/article/690787, we know that this was not true. The BGG alleges that the Highways Agency was being "intransigent and utterly unreasonable in not giving permission for the road closure."

c. ... has failed to obtain consent for the required signage.

d. ... has failed to obtain a Form 150 Order for [traffic] cones ....

e. ... has failed to obtain a temporary speed restriction or obtain appropriate signage from an approved supplier.

Points c, d and e, though not directly addressed by the BGG in their response, seem to be related to point b and the road closure order.

f. ... has failed to contract for the employment of Green Security as internal security contractor and/or provide confirmation to the Claimant of such a contract.

Both Green Security and Coast to Coast Security (who were providing the external security) attended the multi-agency meeting of 23rd July to confirm that they were working at the BGG. Both companies allege that they were repeatedly called by the Council to ask whether they had received monies from the BGG, who had paid both companies in advance a percentage of the cost of the services they were to provide.

Allegedly some of the BGG's contractors complained to the BGG that they felt they were being harassed by the Council to such an extent (one contractor reports being phoned up every ten minutes) that one of BGG's staff telephoned the Council to complain of this.

Section 6 of the application, goes on to say that "... [the Council] has failed adequately or at all to mitigate the risk to public safety, crime and disorder, the protection of children from harm and public nuisance as required by the licence or at all.". Despite the grammatical mistakes in that article, the accusation was unfounded as the BGG had provision on site for professional health and safety teams, two doctors, ambulance (South West Ambulance), the Red Cross, festival welfare services, fully qualified medical herbalists, 400 stewards (Green Stewards), external & internal trained security (Coast to Coast Security and Green Security), a helipad area, fire services (Midland Fire Rescue), a Challenge 21 alcohol policy, lost children and a kids area with a strong child protection policy in place, a professional noise monitoring team as well as trackway, fencing, watch towers which were already being erected when the Council and Police visited the site on 23rd July.

The BGG commented that the "Fire Authority (Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service) were placing unnecessary hurdles in the BGG's way - which were not deemed necessary [for the previous event in 2007]; nor at the time of the granting of the licence, nor was any objection made by the Fire Authority at the previous Licence Hearing."

In actual fact, the BGG's barrister was confident that the only ... that the Concil would be able to uphold was the issue of the road closure order, that also turned out not to be the case.

Possibly the final blow was that the Council notified the Big Green Gathering via email of the intention to file for an injunction on the morning of Monday 27th July, which was received at approximately 6.45pm on Friday 24th, making it nigh on impossible for the Big Green Gathering to obtain legal advice or indeed rectify or respond to any of the Council's outstanding complaints. For example the issue with the road closure order could not have been resolved given that the offices of the Highways Agency would have been closed until the morning that the injunction application was scheduled.

In the BGG's own words: "[These issues] could easily have been sorted out sooner and there was ample opportunity to complain at the licence hearing if there were concerns. No such complaints were made on 30th June and indeed Inspector Sean Williams stated in an email to one of the directors that he believed we had an Event Management Plan suitable for the next few years.".

All this evidence indeed seems to indicate that the Council was intending for the event not to go ahead and was seeking to put up whatever barriers it could find to prevent it going ahead at the last moment; it appears that the Council intended for the lateness to cause maximum financial damage to the BGG. This had the very real knock-on effect of causing financial losses to many local businesses and other organsations, groups and individuals involved in the event's organisation.

Shame on you Mendip District Council.