Festival lacked Christmas spirit says councillor

HENLEY’S Christmas Festival lacked the spirit of the season, according to a town councillor.

Kellie Hinton said there was a lot of negativity around the three-day event from Friday to Sunday, November 25 to 27 due to the town’s poor street lighting.

Speaking at a meeting of the town council’s events sub-committee, she said: “We need to have more festive stuff. I like the idea of some simple community things. If we put some focus into that, we don’t have to triple the budget.

“It would lovely to have sponsors if people want to put money in and celebrate their community but, actually, some of the simplest things don’t cost money.

“It’s really about involving people, children and parents and having some fun as well.”

Philippa Ratcliffe, of Experience Henley, said she wanted more businesses and people to get involved so that the celebrations would last longer than a weekend.

Richard Pinches, of Meadow Farm Studios, suggested having an ice rink for the whole of December.

But Mayor Michelle Thomas said this wasn’t realistic due to the lack of volunteers.

She said: “Being a councillor for four years, I can tell you that it’s about people actually coming forward to help actually make this happen. It’s the same councillors every single time that volunteer and there’s only about two or three of them to do that, so I can’t see that being a realistic proposal, unfortunately, unless we can get more bodies.

“I propose that we keep it as is but if there is an outside body that might be interested in coming, or a particular Christmas market run by another person or another company that’s interested, then we invite them in.”

Laurence Morris, who owns Laurence Menswear in Duke Street, complained that there was not enough publicity surrounding the festival. He suggested installing signs to publicise town events on the bridge.

“For people coming into Henley, there’s got to be a way to tell them what is happening,” he said. “Very few people even knew the festival was going on, let alone when it was, so I think there’s a lot that could be done.”

Councillor Sarah Miller, who chairs the sub-committee, said that Henley needed to be more of a “Christmas destination”.

Cllr Hinton said the arrangement of the stalls had worked and the litter was dealt with well. She said: “I was really pleased to see that stalls were kept away from the area opposite Gabriel Machin. It’s usually a bottleneck area. I moan about it in the pre-meeting every single year.

“By having that area free of stalls, we were able to move people into that area and still keep enough space free to make sure that the bottleneck we have had for the last 11 years at least was not there.

“I know it sounds really stupid, but I thought that was a really big win.”

Deputy Mayor Donna Crook said she was “irked” by Stonor Park using the Henley name for its Christmas festival, which took place from November 24 to 27.

She said: “Not complaining, but they seemed to hijack the name Henley and people think that’s what we’re doing and they will go to that very large event.”

Cllr Hinton agreed that it should have been called the Stonor Park Christmas Fair, not Henley Christmas Fair at Stonor Park.

The committee also discussed the Christmas shop window display competition. which had only 11 entries.

Mr Morris suggested that it would make it more attractive to traders if they didn’t have to enter but their windows were just judged.

Mrs Ratcliffe agreed, saying: “Everybody is making an effort to do some fantastic window displays.”