Winchester's Boomtown festival survives crunch licensing review amid backlash from residents
A large, popular Winchester festival has survived a crunch review despite a backlash from residents.
The Winchester City Council licensing committee decided not to change the premises licence for alcohol and music for the Boomtown event that will run on August 10 to 15.
The review of the five-day festival’s license was triggered by Hampshire Constabulary applying to look at the running of the event after the death of a 22-year-old man last year.
The police withdrew their complaint at the last minute before the sub-committee meeting and are in ongoing talks with the Boomtown organisers to resolve its concerns for this year’s event, the committee heard on January 30.
With that in mind, the licensing sub-committee sat to hear 17 complaints and objections from local residents about the Boomtown festival at Matterley Bowl, Alresford Road, Winchester.
Objections raised ranged from residents’ lack of sleep during the event to concerns on the impact on local red listed bird populations.
Started in 2010, one organiser said they chose the site for Boomtown because of the beauty of the South Downs National Park and had no intention of destroying the environment but were looking to showcase it to visitors.
One objector Terence Jones said the event takes five weeks to build, one week to run and three weeks to take down by a purpose-built construction village of 2,000 workers. He said 200 to 250 hectares of the 444-hectare site used for camping and car parks are mowed and that takes away habitats from ground nesting birds.
His bird count after the event indicated to him that numbers of birds were lower on the festival site than the number of birds in the fields adjourning the festival site. He said his conclusion was that the mowing impacted the birds numbers.
His written statement said: “In your duties in assessing this application I would remind you that killing Lapwing or Skylark or Corn Bunting or Yellowhammers is just as illegal as killing children.”
Boomtown’s solicitor Matthew Phipps said they were not in the business of killing birds – and there was no proof. When asked about it by sub-committee chair, Cllr Jonny Morris (Lib Dem, St Barnabas), Mr Jones said he had no evidence and had not complained to the police.
Alison Mathews objected to the noise during the event, especially music playing until 4am on a Friday and Saturday. She said that midnight would be more acceptable as she felt frazzled and the low thudding of bass noise all day affected residents’ well-being. Other concerns were the impact of traffic and strobe lighting on unsuspecting drivers.
Despite the objections the licence was not changed.
Bands performing this year include Maribou State, Sex Pistols, Sean Paul, Overmono, The Mary Wallopers, Rudimental, James HYPE, Boney M., Girls Don’t Sync, Honey Dijon and DJ Craig Charles.
Boomtown is also planning to increase its capacity. In a separate application to the South Downs National Park Authority, bosses want permission to host the event annually for the next five years at the Matterley Estate. It wants to increase attendee capacity from 65,999 to 76,999 attendees, which includes 1,000 Sunday tickets reserved for the local community. It also needs to deliver a 10 per cent biodiversity net gain, contributing positively to the natural beauty of the South Downs like providing bird and bat boxes etc to do so.
On the event website it said it aims to ”enhance our commitments to managing impacts on ecology, transport, sound, and lighting, ensuring that Boomtown continues to bring cultural, social, and economic benefits to the local area”.
South Downs National Park Authority is set to decide on planning application reference SDNP/24/05303/FUL by April 17.