Villagers Blast Rewind Festival

RESIDENTS of Remenham have called for a review of Rewind Festival’s premises licence, accusing the organisers of multiple breaches.

They branded the traffic arrangements for last year’s weekend pop festival on Temple Island Meadows in August both “dangerous” and “chaos”.

Rob Emerson spoke on behalf of the Remenham Farm Residents’ Association at a heated exchange with festival organisers at a meeting of Wokingham Borough Council’s licensing and appeals sub-committee on Friday.

The association had submitted an application for review of the festival’s licence, arguing that its objectives were being undermined.

The festival has been running for the past 14 years and is attended by about 14,000 people on the Saturday and 12,000 on the Sunday.

Mr Emerson said: “Over the years and particularly in recent years, Henley town has effectively appropriated Remenham parish, and thereby Wokingham borough, as its entertainment park. In the last two years alone, there have actually been 325 days of events. That’s the event time and the set-up and take down and it’s that that causes the disruption and public nuisance.

“But in fact it goes further than that. It’s ironic in a way that all of them have Henley labels but not one of them is in Henley town.

“They get all the benefit economically but we get all the costs and disruption, here in this borough.

“It's throughout the summer. During the events themselves sometimes it’s easier, it’s the setting up and taking down. In Rewind’s case, as we said in the submission, the scale of the build is enormous.

“We sent a video clip of two articulated lorries passing each other — they happened by coincidence to be passing in front of Remenham church. It’s the only place on that lane where they could have passed.

“One of them wasn’t just gigantic, it had an equally long trailer behind it, impossible to reverse. That’s what happened on the day after the event.

“It was take down time and the traffic management plan was abandoned. There’s no other word for it, it was abandoned.

“All the traffic signs in the surrounding roads that guided these trucks were removed. The marshalling was removed.

“The marshalling was totally ineffective anyway because, for example, while the car parked at the end of Remenham Lane to prevent trucks coming along, there were two men sitting inside it allowing trucks to come along.

“I said, ‘Why are you doing this?’ and they said, ‘Well, we don’t have the power to stop them’.

“If a house had caught fire on Remenham Lane or someone had a heart attack, no emergency services could have got to it.

“This isn’t just a public nuisance. This is dangerous, this is seriously dangerous. And it’s beyond belief that it could be allowed to happen.

“In our view, it showed something of an attitude of ‘The community doesn’t matter, we just want to have this whole thing taken down’.

“It works better in the week leading up to the event because it has to work because otherwise there’s no event, but once it’s done we have chaos.

“It’s the scale of this on what are 8ft wide, single track, country roads for what is 325 days that has been our biggest concern.”

John Halsall, vice-chairman of Remenham Parish Council, said the council supported the residents’ call for a review.

The residents were represented at the meeting by Leo Charalambides, a specialist lawyer, who argued for conditions to be added to the licence, including having a resident on the festival’s safety advisory group, a full environmental impact assessment and a dedicated traffic management company to consult with residents.

Neil Brown, who lives at one of the houses closest to the festival site, called for the beeping noise from reversing vehicles to be stopped and for white noise to be used instead.

In the submission, he wrote: “The licence permits the use of reversing horns. There is a distance restriction on their use but I have seen that breached.

“I have also found that even when the distance restriction is observed, the horns are so loud that they are heard in every room of my home throughout most of the two weeks and from early morning to (on some days) the early hours of the morning.

“The distance restriction is inadequate and there is no time restriction on what is amplified sound.

“I know as a neighbour of Rewind what the noise restrictions outside the permitted ‘main stage’ days and hours means and I can attest that the reversing horns are considerably louder.”

Another point raised by residents was that a previous organiser of the festival had organised meetings with the local community in the village hall and did a debrief afterwards but the current organisers had not shown a similar willingness to engage.

A mediation meeting was held on April 12 with representatives from the festival and the residents’ association.

Mr Charalambides told the sub-committee: “There’s a wealth of evidence that could be brought to you arguing that this festival, among others, could and should be closed down.”

Phil Crier, a lawyer representing the festival organisers, said: “It’s not right in a review application where conditions are being asked for to refer to the fact that there’s a wealth of evidence that would have justified a revocation if that’s what’s being suggested, or a suspension.

“I’ve had absolutely no notice of that and nor does it form part of the case that’s been presented to this committee both in the application or in the evidence we’ve heard so far.”

Mr Charalambides responded: “My clients have judicially considered the evidence and thought about how they can engage in partnership. They’ve set aside those extreme options and that speaks to their competence, their fairness and their interest in partnerships. What we’re saying is we want to be part of the conversation.”

One of the organisers responded to the concerns raised about traffic and said changes were being made to improve traffic flow this year.

He said: “We fully accept that last year we didn’t cover ourselves in glory with the traffic management, particularly on the breakdown after the event.

“We’ve already, I hope, addressed that by increasing the number of days we put a steward at the top of the lane.”

Mr Crier said the organisers would take part in a community meeting and that residents could suggest issues for discussion but that they could not agree to a resident being on the advisory group.

The organisers would provide a draft traffic management plan for this year and in future years.

Mr Crier said he had never heard of a condition on a licence requiring an environmental impact assessment.

He said: “My clients are quite prepared for residents to feed into the team that deals with the sustainability report to raise specific issues. We want to engage with the residents.”

Both sides agreed to an amendment of the condition to white noise beepers to be used on plant and vehicles contracted by the premises licence holder, and to endeavour to require non-contracted vehicles to comply to the same standard, subject to approval by the sub-committee.

The committee agreed to consider the review and respond within five days.

In a statement, festival producer Steve Porter said he was fully aware of the meetings held so far.

He said: “The final part of the process is that we, the premises licence holder, will receive a formal letter outlining the agreed amendments to our licence that we are yet to receive, so it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to discuss that further at this point.

“We are all confident that we have resolved all the matters through the legal process with Wokingham Council and the residents’ association.”

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