Hillsborough Park will host the Tramlines Festival again this year despite the local community feeling that their wishes have been ignored, according to a councillor.
Tramlines Festival is one of the UK’s longest running, city-based music festivals and has been held successfully in Hillsborough Park five times since 2018.
Last July, the music festival grounds became a mud bath after facing severe weather conditions and having so many people in attendance.
The Council approved on Monday March 4 that the festival is a positive and beneficial use of the park, and will go ahead this year.
But Hillsborough Councillor Toby Mallinson said: “The Council has not surveyed residents, leaving it to Tramlines to hold drop-ins which are not representative. I believe that the majority of Hillsborough residents are very concerned about the potential for a repeat of the damage that happened last year.”
A recent survey showed that a third of locals wanted Tramlines, A third did not want Tramlines and a third were wanting changes to ensure that the damage would not be repeated.
Ruth Hubbard, from the It’s Our City campaign, said: “Our council aligns the ‘public interest’ firmly and fully with ‘private/corporate interests’ in which community concerns are ignored.”
“In comparison with similar urban festivals in other cities I think Hillsborough gets a pretty raw deal. It absolutely needs people to continue to demand better.”
A local resident said: “The loss of the park for over 6 months this year was the icing on the cake. Yes, the grass grew back – but only after the entire summer had been lost, and many other local events had to be cancelled.”
Councillor Gary Clifton, Major Events Manager, said**:** “It was a hard weekend and it’s been a difficult year. We all recognise what happened, we all saw what happened and it sits heavy with a lot of us.
“Equally, I would say that none of us walked away from the problem either, including Tramlines. They were immediately on the problem, they immediately started to rectify the problem, and they’ve paid for the problem.”
Hillsborough Park is still not fully recovered and has become waterlogged due to usual winter weather conditions that have been exacerbated by the Tramlines festival.
Another Hillsborough resident, Janis Marsh, said: “This event should be shared around all the parks and green areas in Sheffield, not just our park which has to be closed for extended periods of time.”
Councillor Clifton said that a drainage plan is in place to recover the bottom of the field and ‘that needs to be done this month’.
According to the council, Hillsborough Park is the only city park with the capacity to host an event of this size and nature. If Tramlines wasn’t held in Hillsborough Park, it would move out of Sheffield and would relocate to another site in another city.
