Sheffield Council accused of being “corporate cheerleaders” for Tramlines and ignoring residents’ complaints

Ruth Hubbard of the group SOS Sheffield Oversight and Scrutiny asked questions on the issue at a meeting of the council’s charity trustee sub-committee (January 22). The Tramlines main stage venue Hillsborough Park was a charitable gift to the city of Sheffield and the sub-committee acts on behalf of the council as the sole charity trustee.

She said: “I recognise that a lot of work has been going on but it’s disappointing to see yet another rather cheerleading report on Tramlines that – in line with all reports that have gone before – fails to address considerable local Hillsborough community concerns. In fact, once again, it appears public and private/corporate interests are aligned and conflated – whilst community concerns are ignored.”

She said that a “reasonable list of community concerns” raised for at least four years include:

• Impacts on/ mitigations for local businesses
• Urine-filled gardens/ginnels and smelly streets
• Other anti-social behaviour (street drunkenness/pre-loading, litter etc)
• A range of parking/traffic/public transport issues (and for better end-of-day dispersals)
• Re-entry for all as of right (rather than discretionary gift & favour for local residents), and prohibitive drink/food costs from largely chain-type festival stallholders for its consequently captive audience)
• Disputes about noise levels and the disturbances they bring
• A range of other evident pre and post-festival impacts.”

She asked what role community and park user groups, and local citizens, played in the council’s review of licensing arrangements for Tramlines in Hillsborough Park and what was learned and taken on board by all parties.

Disruptions

She added: “Why does this council continue to ignore Hillsborough residents’ wide-ranging concerns? What do they need to do to be heard? Should they spend a year like Graves Park campaigners have, very strongly pushing the council, using loud and powerful well-known local voices, holding a few protest-type public meeting events, or should they plan to do things like picket Tramlines or engage in other direct disruptions?

“Would that kind of action be better heard by our council? Does ‘people at the heart of all we do’ mean Tramlines people? Is it more boring for officers to talk to local residents, businesses and groups and understand their concerns – than it is to continue to block their voices and engage with a rapidly growing global business with private equity backers and an increasingly complex corporate structure?”

She questioned whether the new licensing arrangements take any of the issues she mentioned into account and whether progress on those issues will be shared publicly. She also said that the group Friends of Hillsborough Park “has folded precisely because they felt utterly dispirited by the council failure to engage”.

Ms Hubbard mentioned the community impact team and community consultation group that work with the Parklife Festival in Heaton Park, Manchester plus the automatic right to re-entry granted at Portsmouth’s Victorious Festival, also owned by Superstruct Entertainment, the company that runs Tramlines.

She concluded: “For clarity, in answers, I am not interested in hearing more defensive justifications about Tramlines, still less more of our council acting as corporate cheerleaders. These answers for me simply act to obscure and block ongoing, legitimate and persistent community concerns and as though Hillsborough has to simply put up with it for the sake of Sheffield.

“These answers also sometimes assume – or seem to want to assume – that it’s a zero sum debate of for or against Tramlines, when it’s not.

Reasonable

"Nor do I hope to hear more about what members of councillors’ families think of Tramlines which we’ve heard before.

“I’ve also had some perfectly reasonable letters from committee chairs in response to previous inquiries and questions – however, I cannot recall a time when a committee or an officer report has taken up in any serious or meaningful way the community concerns I’m talking about, nor have I heard any positive proposals being brought forth in public in committee meetings to tackle concerns.”

The committee agreed earlier in the meeting to defer discussion of a report on the festival to a future special meeting as they did not yet have all available information at the meeting. Committee chair Coun Ian Auckland apologised to anyone who was watching a webcast of the meeting especially to see the Tramlines discussion.

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He said: “I know an awful lot of work has gone into this and some of the deadlines have been very tight and it’s no reflection particularly – I regret very much deferring it but obviously members feel that that’s the right thing to do for this item, which is an item of significant impact and concern.”

In response to the questions, Coun Auckland read from a written response. He said that there had been a review of the right to occupy licence, not the premises licence or licensable activities, partly because of the adverse weather conditions that hit Tramlines in 2023. The park grassland was badly damaged after a weekend of torrential rain.

He said this had looked at wet weather mitigations and event cancellation procedures.

Damaged

Coun Auckland said: “Community concerns were collated and responded to after the event in July, as detailed in September 2023 reports and have been considered in the report that was to have been considered by the committee today.

“There has not been a list of community concerns consistently raised for four years. Some issues such as re-entry were not raised until the 2022 event. The park has never been damaged to the extent it was in 2023 and reinstatement of the site has usually happened in a matter of days.”

He stated: “The residents’ views are being heard. Tramlines has put measures in place to mitigate concerns wherever feasible, eg parking enforcement.

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“The council received a significant number of complaints for the 2023 event and the report considers a response to the concerns raised.”

Coun Auckland said that the residents’ team is a response from Tramlines, which includes a dedicated residents’ liaison team which answers phone calls and emails and in-person visits “and occasionally reaching out and visiting the residents’ address”.

He said that the liaison team had been in place since Tramlines arrived in Hillsborough Park in 2018. Coun Auckland said it is a full-scale, month-long operation and the team has direct contact with the council’s event management team and on-site event control.

Freedom

He said that if an incident arises they find out the full details and raise it with events control or go directly to the agency the query belongs to.

Coun Auckland said there are sanitation teams working in the area during the event.

He said that twice-yearly drop-in sessions are held for residents and pre-event comms are in place to communicate with local people. This also deals with residents’ tickets and fulfilment.

Coun Auckland said that the Victorious Festival has five large entry and exit gates that can accommodate “a transient crowd, rather than the two fixed exits that Tramlines has”. He said that the much larger site, covering much of the seafront, allows queues to be split more efficiently.

He added that surrounding streets are shut during the Victorious Festival to create sterile areas, which they don’t want to do in Hillsborough as it would restrict residents’ freedom of movement.

Council deputy leader and committee member Coun Fran Belbin said that she understood that issues such as relationships with the community would be included in licensing agreements.

She stressed: “We can’t take these kinds of decisions on the licence until we’ve seen that kind of clear information, I think. Even if it’s not everything we wish it would be, we need at least a clear idea of it.”

Lisa Firth, director of parks, leisure and libraries, said that the number of residents’ tickets issued was not because of a directive from the council, but she said that Tramlines do more than most event organisers in their ticket scheme, which had increased significantly from 2022 to 2023.

She said that not all 3,900 tickets were taken up.

Ms Hubbard commented that was a “sop” and did not address community concerns.