Weather Blamed for Gunnersbury Park Festival Noise Disruption
Prevailing winds and stage set up means music more audible in Chiswick
A DJ at this weekend's event in Gunnersbury Park. Picture: Festival Republic
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August 11, 2024
Although concerts at Gunnersbury Park can regularly be heard over the summer season, this weekend’s Festival Republic series has, according to many Chiswick residents, been particularly loud.
This is despite the Community Interest Company which manages the park saying that it has new, more robust noise management processes in place and that complaints have been well down on previous years.
However, on Friday evening (9 August), when electronic artist Fisher was headlining, residents from Grove Park to Bedford Park were bombarding the venue’s noise nuisance reporting line (020 3781 0001) with calls saying that the music was so audible that it is waking sleeping babies, making it impossible to stay in gardens and disturbing shift workers trying to get some rest. Some residents say that they had to call over ten times before the help line was finally answered.
Whether as a result of these complaints or due to management taking action, the noise levels on Saturday, with Tom Grennan topping the bill, appeared to be much lower. On Sunday, American Nu Metal band Korn are headlining and they would normally be expected to ramp up the decibel levels.
Part of the issue for Chiswick in particular is that the main stage is orientated towards the south east pointing directly at the area. On Friday the noise appears to have been further amplified by the prevailing wind direction.
The park’s management has appointed independent sound consultants Vanguardia who it says have been on site monitoring noise levels. They produced a weather report which said westerly to south-westerly were expected on Friday and Saturday. Westerly winds cause sound from Gunnersbury Park to be much more audible in Chiswick and it appears that on Friday the wind direction was such to cause maximum impact from noise.
Vanguardia predicted the wind direction to move to the south on Sunday, in which case the ‘axis of propagation’ will moves towards the north and northeast. The BBC was predicting wind from the east on Sunday morning which should reduce the sound impact from the event if correct.
Gunnersbury Park management says it is monitoring sound levels on and off site at locations inside and outside the park to ensure that noise levels do not exceed those agreed to at the time of the grant of the licence. Council representatives were invited to attend pre-event sound checks.
A local resident produced an acoustics report the Waterworks festival in 2022 which explained the impact of wind, warm/cold weather, lower frequencies (the thumping base which also causes vibrations). This encouraged to Gunnersbury Park and festival organisers to appoint Vanguardia and a voluntary agreement by festival organisers to reduce the maximum decibels level from 75 to 73 and not to use two of the lower frequencies to reduce the thumping base and vibrations.
There are more festivals next weekend with Peggy Gao headlining on Saturday (17 August) and PJ Harvey on Sunday (18 August). The Waterworks festival takes place this year on 14 September with the DnB Allstars Festival on 15 September.
If you are disturbed by noise from events at Gunnersbury Park as well as the help line (020 3781 0001) you can report it to Hounslow Pollution Control team on this link.
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