Agenda item

Joint report of the Director of Communications and the Director of the Built Environment.

The Committee considered a joint report of the Director of Communications and the Director of the Built Environment concerning the fireworks display associated with the Lord Mayor’s Show.

A representative of the City of London Police was in attendance, who outlined the various concerns held by the Force in respect of health and safety concerns. These were primarily due to the need to balance the competing demands of establishing requisite hostile vehicle mitigation (HVM) measures in view of the national terror threat level, whilst also allowing sufficient ingress and egress routes to counter the risk of over-crowding and associated crushing in the event of an incident. Significant additional resource would be necessary to manage this risk and, even with this resource, due to the short period of planning time remaining until the proposed event the City Police would still retain real concerns from a public safety perspective.

The Assistant Director of the Built Environment also spoke to outline the requirements in terms of road closures and traffic implications, noting that Westminster City Council’s clear direction was that they would not authorise road closures on the scale of last year’s event, due to the disruption caused. However, as a consequence of the increased HVM and footprint required to offset the issues highlighted by the City Police, a greater scale of road closures would ultimately be required to facilitate the event. The Assistant Town Clerk & Culture Mile Director also took the opportunity to outline the extensive activity undertaken in the lead-up to last year’s Show, where the continually evolving situation in respect of competing HVM and crowd safety requirements had resulted in the Show almost being cancelled at the eleventh hour, despite the larger footprint.  

In response to questions, it was advised that relocating the fireworks to Tower Bridge had been assessed as not being a feasible option due to the smaller capacity and footprint available at the location, as well as traffic implications associated with necessary closures of Tower Bridge. As that Bridge was one of the primary mechanisms through which traffic in London was kept flowing throughout the Lord Mayor’s Show, to also close this major artery at the same time would have extensive traffic implications.

Following debate, Members were clear that there was no alternative but to cancel the fireworks this year due to the significant health and safety concerns and the primacy of public safety in any plans to celebrate the day. Notwithstanding this, however, Members expressed their significant discontent that they were being effectively forced into this decision at this late stage, particularly given that this was an annual event and therefore it should have been possible to plan properly and present options to Members at an earlier stage. Officers were instructed to begin work on proposals for a 2019 display with immediate effect, to provide sufficient time for all requisite City Police and other officer input so as to facilitate the development of a robust plan for Members to consider next year.

It was also agreed that the funding which had previously been allocated for this year’s fireworks show should be rolled over to 2019. Members noted that high-level political contact might be required with Westminster City Council, Transport for London and other partners to help ensure the event was able to proceed in 2019.

RESOLVED: That:-

1)    the fireworks display associated with the Lord Mayor’s Show be cancelled for 2018;

2)    the funding allocated for the 2018 fireworks display be rolled-over to 2019; and

3)    officers be instructed to begin preparation and planning for the 2019 fireworks display immediately, to ensure that it could proceed.