Festival Damage 2015

Restoration work begins, 5th September 2015

Underbelly

Underbelly outbid the Ladyboys of Bankok for use of the Meadows this year, and brought on their Circus Hub. For the construction phase tracking was laid to take the heavy vehicles. Unfortunately this seems to have sunk into the ground and left a groove just over 2 inches deep.

David Doig, Environmental Manager for the South Central Neighbourhood Partnership, the arm of the Council responsible for upkeep of the Meadows, says “I do feel it’s very unfair to say that ‘it really has sunk very deep’ when in fact it has a depression of two inches on one side. Underbelly where working in extremely wet conditions and I feel that this slight depression is quite minimal as to the damage that could have been expected.

"The type of work that has already taken place on the site in advance of the event and the work that is scheduled for the Saturday following the event will take care of this without requiring turfing.”

We shall see if he is right when restoration work takes place in September. See below

There is some black tracking from Middle Meadow Walk onto the Circus Hub site. We don't know why it's there. In previous years tracking laid for the duration on the festival has been translucent, which damages the grass much less. Why hasn't it been used here?

Evans Funfair

There seemed to be a great many caravans on site, with lots of people living on site. We thought the Council permitted only essential security staff to remain on site overnight. Why have all these folk been allowed to set up home here?

There seem to be lots of cars parked illegally at times. We saw one with a note from the Council informing the driver that it is not permitted to park here, but there doesn't seem to be any penalty applied. Can the Council issue parking tickets to cars parked on the grass? It would seem sensible to do so.

We also saw tyre tracks showing that vehicles had been driving over the grass to access the Funfair site from Melville Drive. They had driven on avoiding the grasscrete area (which was fenced off), round the site fencing and onto the site via an entrance on the north side. We do not think this is what the Funfair had arranged with the council for access to the site. The photos below don't show the tyre tracks very well, but they were quite clear on the ground.

Afterwards

After Evans Funfair had left, we had a look at their site. Not too bad, but some patches where the grass seemed completely dead.

On 31st August, when Underbelly were busy clearing their site, we went out with a camera to record what was happening. As you can see in the pictures below, there were several big machines working across the site, and the grass, having been covered up for a month, is looking pretty thin. We look forward to seeing what the Council can do to restore the site, and make it useable again.

Restoration work did start on 5th September. The plan is to fill all the holes and seed the area. We wonder how soon it will be possible to play football here again.

This is what it looked like on 3rd September:

Here they are working on it on 5th September: