Wolverhampton park’s Ibiza music festival gets the go-ahead despite huge outcry from residents

Walsall-based New Vision Events will stage the Ibiza Proms in the Park extravaganza – the second of its kind – in Bantock Park, Finchfield Road, on Saturday June 17, between noon and 10pm.

Approval for the festival, which was a massive hit with visitors in September last year, was given by the council’s statutory licensing sub-committee despite a large number of written objections from neighbours concerned about potential noise levels, parking problems, litter and anti-social behaviour.

Rob Edge, director of Licence Leader Ltd, representing the applicants, told members: “This is the second year for this event to take place in Wolverhampton. It was a resounding success last year even though there were some complaints in relation to noise. The event saw over 3,000 people attend and the feedback on social media was phenomenal.

“Everyone enjoyed themselves and there was an increase in footfall for local venues in the city centre after the event ended, which was good for the city and the night-time economy and received positive feedback from Pubwatch.

“Lessons have been learnt from last year and rightly so. Some of the changes made for this year’s event include a wider distribution of a letter drop to residents with much more detail included, giving information on what’s happening and when.

“Additional resident meetings will be held and the event has been reduced from two days down to one. We have listened to environmental health and other parties and realised that holding the festival over a two-day period may be too much,” he added.

“A revised layout of the site, having the stage located away from residential properties – thereby reducing noise – has also been factored in. A more professional acoustics company has come on board to supervise noise pollution and is working in tandem with environmental health.

“We believe the event will not only benefit the organisers, but will increase the number of visitors to the area who will spend money at local venues such as cafes and hotels and also on taxis etc. The festival will also bring many jobs to local people and we believe it will be an asset to the area.”

A number of residents attended Friday’s meeting to express concerns over parking on the day. Mr Edge said that the event was tickets only for over 18s and that the postcode from each sale was analysed and fed to the appointed traffic management company.

“Looking at last year’s event, 90 per cent of ticket sales were made by people who were all within Wolverhampton and the company were able to design the traffic management plan and taxi drop-off points around that,” he said.

Licensing sub-committee chairman councillor Phil Page told members that the licence was granted subject to a condition of additional staff training being undertaken.