Lambeth grants a month-long Brockwell Park event permit, up from 10 days in 2025

Lambeth's cabinet member for stronger communities approved an event permit covering Brockwell Park from 9 May to 9 June 2026 for the festivals that make up Brockwell Live. The decision record is dated 7 May 2026, two days before that period began.

The two previous permits ran for ten days each. The 2025 record permitted the festivals in the park between 23 May and 1 June, and the 2024 record from 24 May to 2 June.

The council's framework for the park sets out the longer pattern. Its activity plan puts a summer event season in May and June and states: "For one month only we will host the summer events back-to-back; this will consist of Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, not to exceed three consecutive weekends." It provides for one major event of six event days plus two Lambeth Country Show days, at a capacity of "up to 25,000".

Council spending on the festivals has fallen across the three years. The 2024 record approved up to £45,000 from the events budget to support delivery, the 2025 record £30,000, and the 2026 record £10,000.

The framework puts the income on the other side of that. It states: "The Summer Season event will generate income starting from £445,968 in Year One rising to £482,730 in Year Five subject to number of event days used in the framework."

What these organisers pay for this permit is another matter, and the published papers do not give it. The 2026 decision lists a restricted enclosure among its documents, and Lambeth's page on licences for sports, exercise and events publishes no charges, directing organisers to EventLambeth, a portal that sits off the council's own website.

Lambeth logged the 2026 approval as a key decision and recorded it as not subject to call-in, the process by which councillors can ask for a decision to be reviewed before it takes effect. The record flags it as an urgent item, and two special urgency notices sit among its papers.

That is the second year in that form. The 2025 approval carried the same urgent flag and the same absence of call-in, while the 2024 approval was subject to call-in and took effect on 1 June 2024, nine days after the decision and eight days into the festivals.

The council's own notice had pointed at a decision six weeks earlier. Its issue record for the 2026 approval states that notice was first published on 23 February 2026, with the decision due on or after 24 March.

Brockwell Park sits in Herne Hill and Loughborough Junction wards, and the record names Kevin Crook, assistant director for neighbourhoods, as lead officer. The approval is conditional on continued engagement with the Lambeth Event Safety Advisory Group.

The council's own show follows the commercial festivals into the same park. The Lambeth Country Show 2025 record recommends that the show be "managed by promoters Summer Events Ltd on the weekend following their Brockwell Live events in the park, as per the 2023 and 2024 events", and that decision was taken on 5 June 2025 for a show on 7 and 8 June.

The framework runs out this year. It states that "no additional applications will be considered over and above the Activity Plan in 5.3 during the lifetime of this five year strategic framework", and the record names no successor to it.