A week ago today we wrote to the Isle of Wight council asking to see the detailed event plan that the festival organisers must submit, including the traffic management plans.
After the disastrous handling of Isle of Wight Festival traffic we thought it was only right that the public find out ‘who had planned what’ in those circumstances, and therefore be able to judge who did, or didn’t carry out what they were supposed to do.
All we’ve experienced over six days of back and forth with the council is them giving various reasons why they should block the release of the document.
The chain of events was started by one of the 239 comments left on one of the VB Festival stories (there were another 40 comment on the VB Facebook Wall).
“I think we should see it”
Retired Hack’s comment (which, BTW, received 47 ‘Likes’ – one of the highest on any comment we can remember) included the following:-
The permitted increase to 90,000 was agreed on May 17, 2011, by a three-person licensing sub-committee chaired by Cllr Susan Scoccia. The terms of the licence dispensed with the need for the organisers to come back each year to get it renewed, and was agreed in spite of many objections, including from Newport Parish Council and Cllr Geoff Lumley. One of the conditions was that a a detailed event plan must be submitted 120 days before the event to cover matters including traffic management. I think we should see it.
On Friday we wrote to a council’s press officer:-
We understand that a detailed detailed event plan must be submitted 120 days before the event by the Isle of Wight Festival organisers, including traffic management plans.
Can you have it sent to us please. Thanks in advance.
“Not a public document”
Within a couple of hours we were told “I’m afraid this is not a public document, so not something I can send you”. We responded by asking why.
We didn’t get an answer, so we wrote to one of the Cabinet members asking him to straighten it out, explaining the lack of co-operation we were experiencing adding, “Hiding the Solo-submitted document from the public will do nothing to calm this situation.”
When commercial confidentiality was raised again, we replied, “Given the IW Festival event has passed, can’t imagine why commercial confidence would be invoked.”
Bumped to FoI
The next email informed us it was being dealt with as an Freedom of Information (FoI) request – the first we’d heard of it – and the council lawyers were looking into it.
We suggested that putting it to FoI and the month delay that would bring, would only drag the story out longer.
Late yesterday we received the following:-
Event organisers are required to submit an Emergency Safety and Operational Plan (ESOP), however this is not a document that is published as it contains information that is both commercially confidential and potentially very sensitive from a security/policing point of view. The council is working with organisers of all large events on the Island to produce a version of the ESOPs that can be published, obviously excluding any sensitive security or commercial information. We expect to be able to publish something in this regard shortly.
We’ve responded:-
If you continue to hold on to the “commercially confidential” reasoning, now adding that it is “potentially very sensitive from a security/policing point of view”, at least release the section – traffic management (see our original email of seven days ago) – that we and the rest of the Island are interested in.
Continued attempts to hide the contents of this document will keep this story running and raises suspicious ever higher.
We’ll keep you informed of developments.
Image: Richard ‘Tenspeed’ Heaven under CC BY 2.0
