Delapré Abbey has promised residents they will have a ‘voice’ in a full review after parking chaos during Zimfest left Far Cotton and surrounding streets gridlocked over the weekend.Zimfest – described as the UK’s largest celebration of African culture, music and heritage – took place at Delapré Abbey, in Far Cotton, from 1pm until 10.30pm on Saturday, July 25, with around 11,000 revellers attending.However, the event led to widespread complaints from residents after surrounding streets became gridlocked with cars, with some attendees parking in residential areas instead of using designated parking or the park-and-ride service from Edgar Mobbs Way.Far Cotton ward councillor Julie Davenport said she had been “inundated” with complaints from residents following the event.Pictures of traffic chaos throughout the course of the day and night in Far CottonShe said: “The evidence I have seen includes antisocial behaviour, persistent horn sounding long after the event had finished, shouting and abuse, people urinating in residents’ gardens, one incident of defecation in a front garden, dangerous parking, and vehicles blocking or parking across residents’ driveways.”For many local people, it was an absolute nightmare.”My thoughts are with the residents who had to endure this and with the team at Delapré Abbey. They work incredibly hard to deliver events that our community enjoys and values, and I know they are devastated by what has happened.”I will now be seeking answers as to whether proper due diligence was carried out before this event took place, or whether the process became little more than a tick-box exercise.”Residents deserve to know what planning took place, what mitigation measures were put in place, and why they proved so ineffective.”I want to be clear that this is not a criticism of Delapré Abbey or its dedicated team. We all want the Abbey to continue hosting successful events that bring people together and benefit Northampton.”However, in my view, the organisation of Zimfest was an unmitigated failure from the perspective of local residents, and it is vital that lessons are learned to ensure this never happens again.”Delapré Abbey has apologised for the disruption and said residents will have a say in a review into what went wrong.Amanda Nichols, of Delapré Abbey, said: “All residents will get a voice in the review.”We’ll be doing a sort of town halls kind of meeting, where we’ll liaise with the local elected councillors, ward councillors and the community council, who will support us.”There will be, in the next couple of weeks, something where the community can have a voice on this.”We are currently investigating all the various different elements of the event and we’ll be reviewing going forward what happens with this event. Part of that will be fed from the conversations we have with the residents.”The organisers will equally be working with me to go through and review all of this. And we are listening to the community.”Ms Nichols said organisers had put traffic management measures in place, including a park-and-ride service from the Saints ground, but said many people chose not to use it.She said: “We had booked the Saints ground to do park and ride. The instructions to ticket holders was not to come to Delapré. It was to use the park and ride.”However, people tried their luck.”All the plans, we worked with SAG and the local authority to support us on the traffic management plans, and all of them are modelled on ensuring cars don’t come this way.”So despite all the mitigations and plans for parking to be removed from the site and push people away, we were not pushing people to park in the resident streets by any means.”There was other parking implemented across the town. However, people did not use it.”Despite plans and all the measures that were put in place, it didn’t go to plan.”Asked about responsibility for what happened, Ms Nichols said the Abbey would not seek to blame others.She said: “I’m not going to sit there and blame others. I want to take some ownership for it.”We allowed this to happen and we let this event take place. There were traffic management plans in place. There were lots of conversations with the SAG and the council about this.”But I can’t take back what’s happened. I can apologise for it, but I can’t undo it.”So we will just have to take the learnings.”It was a team of people working together to deliver all of these events and I am not going to wash our hands of our part in it. So we will own that with this as much as everybody else involved.”Ms Nichols said the impact on staff had been “soul destroying”.She said: “We’ve done a lot of work to rebuild and work with our community. So it is soul destroying what we’ve done and the impact it has had on the community.”What we do at Delapré and what we try and do is to support our local community, to support the preservation of the heritage site so that the community can enjoy it and bring in new audiences and break down barriers. That’s what we’re trying to achieve.”So it really does matter to us that it has impacted on our community and Far Cotton shouldn’t have had to deal with what they did.”Ms Nichols said staff had already started speaking with residents.She said: “We’ve been going out door to door today, talking to the community and listening to their feedback.”We are listening. We are not just going to roll forward and say, ‘It’ll happen again next year,’ with no changes.”There’ll be a review and, as we listen to everyone, we won’t make any final decisions or make any changes until we have heard from everybody.”Then we will publish and share what the next steps are.”We’re talking with the local authority at the moment. We’re talking with everyone we can.”Ms Nichols said Delapré Abbey had carried out checks before agreeing to host Zimfest.Ms Nichols said the problem was not the number of people attending, but the number of vehicles arriving.She said attendance was estimated at between 11,000 and 11,500 people.She said: “I don’t think it’s really down to the volume of people coming. It was more to do with the volume of vehicles coming.”Summertime Live the week before was around 10,000 to 10,500.”So I don’t think it’s really down to the volume of people coming. It was more to do with the volume of vehicles coming.”Summertime Live had predominantly taxis and people coming in hotels and things like that, whereas this was a lot more people driving.”She said: “Before this festival got contracted, we did quite a lot of due diligence.”We spoke with the previous venue (which hosted Zimfest) and had positive reviews. We had references and things like that.”It’s in our process before we contract or work with anyone that we do all of our reference checks and due diligence.”Ms Nichols also addressed criticism over the £30 charge to park at Delapré Abbey during the event, saying the fee was intended to encourage visitors to use the cheaper park-and-ride service rather than drive to the venue.“There’s probably a perspective of that being about greed and it wasn’t. It was more because we want people to use the park and ride. The park and ride was cheaper.”Residents also questioned event information which directed motorists to the Grosvenor Centre and Mayorhold car parks. The Grosvenor Centre car park closes at 6pm, while Mayorhold was closed by West Northamptonshire Council last week over safety concerns.Ms Nichols said: “That only closed after the marketing had happened. We’d already issued the proposed parking.”People did use St John’s and there was various other car parks that were used but nobody was keen on the park and ride.”A West Northants Council spokesperson said: “The reports of anti-social behaviour linked to this privately-run event at Delapré Abbey are disappointing and unacceptable. “While the event was organised and managed independently of the council, we recognise the impact it had on residents in Far Cotton and Delapré, particularly in relation to inconsiderate parking, blocked driveways and disruption within the local community. “Our officers will be meeting with Delapré Abbey staff and other partner organisations next week to listen to residents’ concerns, review what happened and consider what measures organisers can put in place to help prevent similar problems in the future.”Zimfest has been contacted for comment. Northamptonshire Police said officers were called to one incident at the event.A force spokeswoman said: “We did respond to one incident at the event, which happened at about 7.30pm and involved a man allegedly punching a woman. We are investigating and anyone with any information should call us quoting incident number 26000442357.”Continue Reading
