The company behind All Points East and LIDO festivals has applied for permission to use Victoria Park for up to 75 days a year.
An application, submitted by AEG Presents to Tower Hamlets Council, seeks planning permission for its festivals for the next six years.
The proposed 75-day period, as outlined in documents submitted to the council, “includes the period required to construct and deconstruct the festival site... to allow for Victoria Park to return to full public use”.
AEG has run All Points East in Victoria Park annually since 2018, and launched LIDO festival there last year.
Previously, organisers did not apply for planning permission, as both festival bodies and local councils operated under the belief that it was not necessary. Under planning law, temporary uses of land lasting up to 28 days don’t need planning permission.
Councils and organisers of several festivals thought this only applied to days when the events were open to the public.
But after a legal challenge to festivals held at Brockwell Park in Lambeth, the High Court ruled last year that this had to include days spent setting up and taking down festival sites.
AEG says it intends to occupy use sites in the park for up to 66 days a year. But it wants planning permission for 75 days to allow for “important flexibility, particularly with regards to delays due to inclement weather”.
A planning statement submitted with its application says the number of days it wants permission for is not an increase on its use of the land in previous years.
The planning statement says: “It is important to note that this planning application proposal does not constitute an intensification of the festival proposal.
“AEG are not looking to materially change the events in terms of the scale/capacity, quantum and nature of these events from how they have operated in Victoria Park in previous years.”
This year, AEG plans to hold All Points East over six days, on the weekends of 21st-23rd and 28th-30th August. It says LIDO festival will take place for one day, on the August bank holiday, Monday 31st.
AEG also wants to host a four-day midweek community festival in between the two weekends.
Setup for the festivals would begin on Thursday August 7, and take-down is planned to be completed by Wednesday September 9.
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As in previous years, All Points East would occupy the majority of Victoria Park’s large fields in the south and east of the site.
LIDO, the smaller of the two festivals, would occupy the four fields to the south and east of the memorial drinking fountain.
AEG says that in following years it hopes to run LIDO festival as a multi-day event, as it did last year.
LIDO would use the park for 30 days, and All Points East would use it for 33 days.
However AEG says there would be a “break” of at least 28 days in between the two festivals in which the park would be returned to public use.
Tickets for both of this year’s festivals are already for sale, despite the fact that the council has not yet granted planning permission.
AEG submitted its planning application in March, and the application became available to view on the council’s planning website last Tuesday, 2nd June, once all required documents were received.
The plans can be viewed and commented on using reference number PA/26/00459/A1.