IT bills itself as the UK’s ultimate pop music festival, but plans for September’s 60,000 capacity Fusion Festival, at Otterspool Prom, are sending waves of anger through the waterfront neighbourhoods of south Liverpool.
Ahead of a formal licence application next week, by organisers of the family-orientated event, the city’s cabinet member for culture, Cllr Wendy Simon, has given her blessing to Fusion, which is moving 100 miles north after the past three years in Birmingham. Last year Ed Sheeran, McBusted and Rudimental (main picture) were among chart-topping acts on the bill.
In a letter to the council’s licensing officer, Cllr Simon says Fusion will be a welcome addition to the cultural calendar of Liverpool. From the evidence of previous events in Birmingham, she says she believes the Otterspool event will be organised in a professional and responsible manner.
Events like Fusion, she adds, can have great benefits to the wider community, bringing increased income and job prospects, but also social benefits.
There is nothing family friendly about a child falling onto the electric railway line, or over the low barrier into the Mersey
But in the leafy suburbs of Aigburth and Grassendale it is a different story, fuelling a war of words between residents and the organisers with dozens of objections received by the council ahead of Monday's decision.
The chair of the River Oaks Residents Association describes how the 95 four- and five-bedroom houses, sitting smack between Mersey Road and Riversdale Road, are occupied mainly by surgeons, doctors, barristers, solicitors, CEOs and business men and women. He says the last time there was a music event at the prom the estate suffered from damage and graffiti, and that was from an event attracting just a few thousand people.
One of the Fusion organisers reassured residents that the proposed event is neither Glastonbury nor a rock concert. Residents associations in Birmingham would say that after their initial reservations they had been pleasantly surprised.
The letter from promoter Damien Sanders concludes: “Let me assure you that we will work with residents from all walks of life whether they be solicitors, doctors, CEOs or labourers, dinner ladies or office workers to address all of their concerns and act on any genuine misgivings.”
The council has received dozens of formal objections, mostly focusing on the inability of the area, and the Victorian railway stations at Aigburth and Cressington Park, to cope with such an influx of people. There are also worries about safety, alcohol and the proximity to the river.
There are likely to be road closures, with passes for residents to gain access, and teams of stewards to steer visitors away from housing estates.
Six Labour councillors for the Mossley Hill and Cressington wards have all objected to the festival taking place at Otterspool. Mossley Hill’s Patrick Hurley, Emily Spurrell and Andrew Foxley, as well as Cressington Mary Aspinall, Lynnie Hinnigan and Bill Jones.
Cllr Hurley says: “The event is being marketed as family friendly, but there is nothing family friendly about a child falling onto the electric railway line, or over the low barrier into the Mersey.
“We are not against a the concept of a festival in Liverpool, but we request a more suitable site be found,” he said on behalf of the three ward councillors.
The meeting at the Town Hall starting 11am next Monday (March 21) will decide whether a license should be issued to allow the festival to go ahead, although the high profile event has been widely promoted already. As well as live and recorded music, it will feature films and have a noon till 10.45pm licensed bar on each of the two days.
Many Fusion Festival regulars in the Midlands were “gutted” by the announcement that the event was moving to the Mersey, according to comments on social media when the announcement was made a few weeks ago.
Others may be glad to see the back of it after the Birmingham park in which it was held, was reportedly left in tatters following the 2015 jamboree, leaving promoters with a big civic clean-up bill.
“It’s slap bang in the middle of a residential area and we have music blaring out until late at night over three days,” one resident living near to Cofton Park later told the Birmingham Mail.
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