Brockwell Live's park fee stays confidential as Lambeth publishes £10,000 of its own costs

Lambeth has published £10,000 of its own costs for Brockwell Live 2026 and withheld what the festival promoter pays to hire Brockwell Park.

The officer report behind the permit states that the financial agreement with Summer Events Ltd is confidential and that income figures sit in a Part II report. That part is exempt from disclosure under paragraph 3 of Schedule 12A to the Local Government Act 1972, covering information relating to the financial or business affairs of a particular person.

The Smoke reported the permit earlier this week and recorded that no published paper gave the fee. The report names the exemption as the reason.

About £10,000 covers services such as independent sound monitoring, drawn from the council's events budget. The 2025 permit decision approved £30,000 for the same purpose.

Five festival days ran across two weekends in May: Field Day on 23 May, Cross The Tracks on 24 May, City Splash on 25 May, and Mighty Hoopla on 30 and 31 May. The report caps each day at 29,999 people and classes the series as a major event, defined in the council's events policy as one where daily attendance exceeds 20,000.

Build was scheduled from 10 May and de-rig from 1 to 5 June, with contingency to 9 June and handover of the park on 10 June. Planning permission granted on 26 February 2026 allows up to 32 days, including wet weather buffer days, and the report states about 74 per cent of the park stays publicly accessible throughout.

395 objections, 127 letters of support and seven neutral representations came back through the planning consultation, after 14 site notices went up and 842 properties were written to.

At the ward councillor stage of the council's own event process, the report records a single response: one councillor asked to trigger additional engagement with community stakeholders, and no responses were received through it.

Ground damage, tree protection and reinstatement scored 12 on the report's risk register, as did traffic management and parking, against 9 for public safety and 6 for community impact.

One figure for what the park earns is public. The council's post-event report for 2025 states that events in Brockwell Park have contributed just over £313,000 through the Park Investment Levy over the past three years, and that the levy "is separate to the commercial hire fees that the event was charged".

The 2026 programme runs one fewer commercial festival day than 2025, when the permit covered six festivals including the free Brockwell Bounce.

The two council documents date the premises licence differently. The 2026 report states the event relies on a time-limited licence that expires in 2028, while the 2025 post-event report records it as granted on 16 March 2023 for 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026 and 2027.