Glastonbury Festival told to improve crowd control and reduce noise by district council
Organisers are expected to respond to the criticisms within a couple of months
Glastonbury organisers have been asked to take measures for improved crowd control and a reduction in noise.
The request comes after Mendip District Council, which oversees the issuing of the licence for the annual Somerset festival, discussed concerns about how how well it is being managed. It comes two years after the council identified nine ways in which the festival's 50th anniversary edition in 2020 could improve on previous events.
As revealed in the annual report drew up by the council, councillors and local residents reported "excessive loudness and low frequency" noise during this year's festival. Despite being "well planned and managed" generally, the report also identifies two additional areas that could be improved: “improvements to crowd distribution across the site," in order to prevent crushes and injuries, as well measures to control the density of camping in the staff and performer areas to reduce fire risk and prevent “conflict between vehicles and tents”.
On the subject of a reported increase of noise at this year's festival, Cllr Nick Cottle of Mendip Distract Council said it could partly be attributed to weather conditions. “It’s dependent on weather conditions, wind speed and other things that you’ve got to take into consideration. I mean no disrespect to the residents, but the weather conditions control a lot of where the sound goes to.”
Speaking about crowd control, Councillor Chris Inchley, who chaired the meeting, said: "This year I had constituents contact me about the noise of the festival – even the local MP did the same. Talking to people who actually went to the festival, one comment made by many people was about the actual number of people on the site, especially on the Sunday. They said they felt rather unsafe with the volume of people."
Glastonbury organisers are expected to respond to the criticisms within a couple of months.
Earlier this year, DC-10 Ibiza was forced to shut its garden stage due to noise restrictions put in place by local authorities.
Revisit DJ Mag's feature that asks: after Astroworld, what is being done to stop crowd crushes from happening again?
