Mayor accused of Carnival vote fix

Ken Livingstone has been accused of fiddling a competition to decide the route of next year's Notting Hill Carnival to further his plan for it to go through Hyde Park.

The Mayor has provoked fury by allegedly ignoring the results of a vote held to settle feuding over where the street party should go.

Interested groups were asked to judge 11 routes, from which the GLA drew up a shortlist of four - including one that finishes in Hyde Park and another that begins in it.

But Westminster council, one of several groups opposing the Royal Park being involved, is incensed that its alternative route failed to make the shortlist, despite scoring the second highest points. Councillor Alan Bradley has accused the GLA - which under Mr Livingstone's auspices is helping to supervise the carnival arrangements - of trying to "impose" its own favoured route.

"The selection of potential routes has been a flawed process," he said. "The Greater London Authority is seeking to prejudge the outcome of discussions on the route."

Ever since it was decided two years ago that the existing "circular" carnival route risked dangerous overcrowding, the decision over where it should go instead has been the subject of controversy. Mr Livingstone believes the vast space in nearby Hyde Park provides an obvious solution-But the Royal Parks Agency, the two local councils, and many influential residents are aghast at the prospect, which they claim could ruin the park. The Mayor's comments earlier this year that opponents of his plans were wealthy "toffs" intensified their resolve.

The groups involved in the contest earlier this week included the police, the GLA, Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea councils, the Notting Hill Carnival Trust, and residents. Each submitted copies of their routes for judging to the rest - with the names of the authors removed to avoid bias.

The four routes that emerged after a brain-storming session led by the Mayor's Carnival Review Group all scrap the current circular route in line with recommendations by crowd-control experts Intelligent Space. Instead they boast linear routes, which cut down on the danger of overcrowding at "bottleneck" points and should be easier to police.

The West-East route, starts at Ladbroke Grove and ends off Bishop's Bridge Road near Paddington Station. The Park Question Mark (named for its shape) begins at Hyde Park and goes to Ladbroke Grove via Bishop's Bridge Road. The Chair connects Ladbroke Grove with Notting Hill/Bayswater and finishes in Hyde Park near Lancaster Gate, while the Merging Horseshoe starts at Ladbroke Grove and Great Western Road and goes to Bayswater. Westminster claims its own Horseshoe route, which starts and finishes in the Harrow Road via Ladbroke Grove and Westbourne Park, consistently got scores of eight and nine out of 10 from the others. None of the four routes shortlisted, they say, was rated as the highest.

However, its claims were denied by a GLA spokesman. He added: "Whichever route is chosen will be subject to refinement, consultation and acceptance by parties affected. It is not certain routes mentioning Hyde Park would actually use it."

Intelligent Space will subject the four routes to computer modelling to ensure bottlenecks do not occur. A presentation of the work so far will be given to the Mayor's advisory cabinet on Tuesday. A final decision is expected in December.