The People's Park · since 1845
AEG has applied to fence off about a third of Victoria Park's main fields for up to 75 days a year — all of it in the summer — every year until 2031. The consultation closed on 8 July — but the decision has not been made.
Late comments are still accepted until the decision — and the most powerful thing you can do now is ask your MP to step in.
What you can do now
The consultation has closed, but the decision hasn't been made. Here's what everyone needs to understand: two court rulings — Finsbury Park in 2017 and Brockwell Park this year — stripped away most of the legal protection our parks used to have. Councils can now rent out our public spaces to big corporations, summer after summer, with impunity — unless we do something to stop them.
The most effective thing you can do is write to your MP. It takes five minutes. MPs can press Tower Hamlets before the decision — expected by 1 September — and only Parliament can put the protection back. Pick a letter below, make it yours, and send it.
Stratford & Bow — the park's own constituency: Bow, Fish Island, Old Ford
Bethnal Green & Stepney — the park's south-western approaches
Hackney South & Shoreditch — the park's north side and Victoria Park Village
Not sure who your MP is? Find your MP by postcode. MPs act for their own constituents — write from your own email, and include your full address with postcode and a phone number. MPs' offices will tell you they cannot take up your case without them — a letter missing these details is a letter wasted.
Dear [your MP's name], I'm writing about the plan to fence off a third of Victoria Park for festivals — up to 75 days every summer, for the next six years (planning application PA/26/00459/A1). Victoria Park is the only proper green space many of us have. This is the most densely populated borough in England, and most families round here don't have gardens. AEG already takes over a big part of the park for its 28 days every year — now they want nearly three times that, right through the school summer holidays. The kids with the least space at home are exactly the ones who lose the fields. The council's consultation closed on 8 July and the decision is due by 1 September. Please speak up for us before then — make representations to Tower Hamlets, and ask ministers why private companies are allowed to shut the public out of public parks, summer after summer. Yours sincerely, [your full name] [your full address, including postcode] [your phone number]
Dear [your MP's name], I'm writing about planning application PA/26/00459/A1 — the plan to fence off a third of Victoria Park for up to 75 days every summer until 2031. The fencing would sit right across the school summer holidays, every year for six years. Around here most children don't have gardens. The park's fields are where they run about, learn to ride a bike and meet their friends for six weeks every summer — and the families who can't afford to leave London in August are the ones who lose the most. The consultation closed on 8 July and the council decides by 1 September. Please make representations before then, and ask ministers how it can be right that children's space is rented out in the exact weeks children need it. Yours sincerely, [your full name] [your full address, including postcode] [your phone number]
Dear [your MP's name], I'm writing about planning application PA/26/00459/A1, AEG's plan for Victoria Park. Nobody here is anti-festival. AEG already takes over the park's main fields for 28 days every year, and residents live with it — the fencing, the generators, the sound checks, the lorries for weeks either side of every event. We share the park, and we have never asked for the festivals to stop. But this application nearly trebles it: up to 75 days every summer until 2031, and most of those days aren't concerts — they're a building site. The existing 28 days wouldn't go away either; they'd stay on top. More than 100 days a year of a public park handed to one company isn't sharing. It's a takeover. The council decides by 1 September. Please make representations to Tower Hamlets before then. The ask is simple: the festivals can carry on as they always have, within the limit everyone else lives by. Yours sincerely, [your full name] [your full address, including postcode] [your phone number]
Dear [your MP's name], It is simply not right that a private corporation can fence off a third of our park — behind hoarding twice your height — for up to 75 days every summer until 2031. That's what AEG has applied to do to Victoria Park (application PA/26/00459/A1). This park was created for East Londoners who had nothing else, and that's still what it is. For most of us there's no garden and no other big green space in walking distance. Festivals already happen here 28 days a year and people put up with that. But 75 days, every summer, through every school holiday — that isn't sharing the park, it's taking it. The decision is due by 1 September. Please make representations to Tower Hamlets before then, and stand up in Parliament for people's right to their own parks. Yours sincerely, [your full name] [your full address, including postcode] [your phone number]
Dear [your MP's name], I'm writing about planning application PA/26/00459/A1 — AEG's application to enclose about a third of Victoria Park for up to 75 days every summer until 2031 — and about why your help in particular is needed. Residents have done everything the system asks. In AEG's own consultation, 92% of people objected — 791 to 54 — and hundreds more objections are on the council's register. But the honest picture is that the law no longer gives residents much of a defence: — In 2017, a court ruling about festivals in Finsbury Park gutted the Open Spaces Act 1906, the law that had protected public parks for over a century. — This year, the Brockwell Park ruling decided that commercial festivals count as "outdoor recreation" — the very thing parks are supposed to be protected FOR. — National planning policy, including the current draft NPPF, has no answer to "temporary" events that come back every year, so each summer's takeover is judged as if it were a one-off. — And after years of cuts, councils need the rent. Tower Hamlets is the park's landowner, AEG's business partner, and the authority deciding this application, all at once. Legal challenge is beyond most residents' means, and the courts have shown they won't help anyway. That leaves Parliament — which is why I'm writing to you. Please make representations to Tower Hamlets before the target decision date of 1 September. And please press ministers to make the promised review of green spaces confront this directly: parks held in trust for the public should not be rentable out from under them. Yours sincerely, [your full name] [your full address, including postcode] [your phone number]
What's happening
AEG Presents has applied to Tower Hamlets Council for permission to use the eastern side of Victoria Park for large commercial festivals — including All Points East and LIDO — for up to 75 days a year — all in the summer — for six years.
Most of those days are not concerts. They are the weeks of building and dismantling stages, fencing, compounds and back-of-house infrastructure. During that time the park's principal south-eastern fields are fenced off behind hoarding and closed to the public. The application area covers about 24.8 hectares — close to a third of the whole park.
You can read the application in full on the council's planning register: Tower Hamlets planning register — search for PA/26/00459.
Live music is part of Victoria Park's history, and events can lawfully run for up to 28 days a year without planning permission. Our objection is not to the festivals — it is to enclosing the park's main fields for up to 75 days a year, every summer for six years, nearly three times what the law already allows, on protected open land.
The council can still hear you
The consultation formally closed on 8 July, but councils normally accept comments right up until the decision is made. Anyone can comment — you do not have to live in Tower Hamlets. It takes about five minutes.
Now the consultation window has closed, the online register no longer takes comments — but email still works. Write to development.control@towerhamlets.gov.uk quoting PA/26/00459/A1.
State clearly that you OBJECT to the application, and give your name and postal address — an objection cannot be counted without them.
Say why, in your own words. Pick the points that matter most to you from below, and add your own experience of the park.
Protected open land
Victoria Park is Metropolitan Open Land — protected as strongly as the Green Belt — and a Grade II* registered park. National, London and the council's own policies say a park like this should not be enclosed, and allow only temporary uses that help the public enjoy it. Fencing off around a third of it behind 3.4 metre hoarding, with stages and compounds, for up to 75 days each summer is the opposite.
Noise
Most of the 75 days are building and dismantling, not concerts — a month or more of plant, generators, sound checks and reversing lorries each summer, for six summers. AEG's own noise report accepts the events run well above the recommended limit for parks, sets no measured limit at all for the build-and-break weeks, and measured its "baseline" in February rather than summer.
Traffic & air
AEG's transport document records 687 vehicle arrivals for a single festival — 160 of them articulated lorries — yet states plainly that it "has not conducted any assessment of highway impact". The whole borough is an Air Quality Management Area; the scheme is not "air quality neutral" on AEG's own figures; and its own dust plan admits "significant" dust releases and health complaints at the 2025 festival.
Access when it matters
In 2026 the main fields are occupied from early August to early September — the second half of the school summer holidays. In later years the pattern falls twice, in June and again in August. These are exactly the weeks children, and families who cannot afford to leave London, most need the park.
Fairness
The council's own evidence shows a shortage of children's play space and poor provision for disabled children. For families in flats without gardens, the park's flat, step-free open fields are the main place to play and gather. The council has a legal duty to weigh that impact on children and disabled residents, yet the application provides nothing to assess it.
Six years
The festivals already happen; what is new is the scale of the ask — up to 75 days every summer, fixed until 2031, on a park protected for the public. A short, one- or two-year permission would let the real impacts be judged on evidence, with a chance to think again — rather than the whole thing being signed off for six years at once.
Two roles
Tower Hamlets is the landowner, the events partner and the recipient of the hire income — as well as the authority deciding this application. A decision of this kind needs to be, and to be seen to be, taken with an open mind, and the financial arrangements between the council and AEG should be published before any decision is made.
Not real access
AEG offers "cross paths" through the fenced site — but only during build and take-down, only "where possible", and not on event days, when the fields are closed completely. A gated corridor past hoarding, stewards and bag searches is not the same as an open park, and does not make up for the loss of the fields.
Heritage
The park is a Grade II* registered landscape designed by James Pennethorne, with listed structures and scheduled monuments nearby. Historic England, formally consulted on this application, says the events cause harm that must be given "very considerable weight", and warns of cumulative long-term damage to grass, trees and soils if repeated each year.
Wildlife & trees
The park is a designated wildlife site — home to bats, breeding birds and mature trees. AEG's own ecology report admits a significant effect on bats, and cites festival-driven falls in bat activity of 65–79% at a comparable park; its tree report concedes vehicles, parking and crowds within the protected root zones of mature trees. The promised habitat improvements are unsecured, deferred to a 30-year plan that does not yet exist — against a six-year permission.
What happens next
The consultation closed on 8 July and the council's target decision date is 1 September 2026. The council weighs every objection, consults bodies such as Historic England, and then decides. We are asking for that decision to be made by the Development Committee — elected councillors, in a public meeting — rather than by officers under delegated powers.
If it goes to the Development Committee, residents can register to speak for a few minutes — one of the most effective things you can do. We'll post the date here as soon as it is set — it also appears on the council's committee pages.
Your ward councillors represent you, and can ask officers to support residents or call the application in to committee. Find yours: Tower Hamlets · Hackney.
Planning decisions turn on planning reasons, not on numbers of angry messages. Keeping everything calm, factual and about the park carries far more weight with the committee — and it protects a refusal from being challenged later.
The committee's membership and public meeting dates are published on the council's website: Tower Hamlets democracy & committees.
Spread the word
Most objections happen because a neighbour mentioned it. Two minutes of sharing is worth as much as anything else you can do.
Print the A4 poster — or two per page as A5 flyers — for windows, noticeboards, stairwells and the school gate.
Open the print sheetSend the link to your street's group chat, residents' association or local forum — wherever your neighbours already talk.
Press, offers of help, or planning and legal expertise: keepvictoriaparkopen@proton.me · An email to us is not an objection — objections go to the council, above.
Questions
No. Two things still work. The most effective is writing to your MP — five minutes with the ready-made letters above. And you can still email a late comment to the council at development.control@towerhamlets.gov.uk (quote PA/26/00459/A1): councils normally accept comments right up until the decision is made. Only the online register form has closed.
Because the ground has shifted. Two court rulings — Finsbury Park in 2017 and Brockwell Park this year — stripped away most of the legal protection parks used to have, so objections alone can no longer carry this. MPs can do two things nobody else can: press Tower Hamlets about this application before it decides, and push to change the law that lets "temporary" festivals swallow public parks every summer. The first only helps this park; the second helps every park.
Yes. The park sits on the borough boundary and its loss crosses it. Write to your own MP — for Hackney South & Shoreditch that is Dame Meg Hillier (meg.hillier.mp@parliament.uk) — MPs act for their own constituents, wherever the park is. Late comments to the council are also open to anyone, wherever they live.
A letter to your MP is private correspondence — it is not published anywhere. If you email a comment to the council, your name and address appear on the public planning register (a comment has to be attributable to be counted), but your signature, phone number and email address are normally withheld — see the council's guidance on commenting.
No. Events can lawfully take place for up to 28 days a year without planning permission, and we do not object to that. We object to enclosing the park's main fields for up to 75 days every summer, for six years — a large, long-term change to a protected public park.
The council weighs the representations, consults statutory bodies such as Historic England, and then decides — the target date is 1 September 2026. We are pressing for the decision to be made by the Development Committee — elected councillors, in a public meeting — rather than by officers alone. If it goes to committee, residents can register to speak. We'll post the committee date here the moment it is set.
Three things. Use your own words — start from one of the letters above and change it until it sounds like you. Include your full address with postcode and a phone number — MPs' offices cannot take up a case without them. And send it from your own email address: MPs weigh letters from identifiable constituents far above anything a campaign sends.