Wildlife Festival 2015 - local policing

Hello and welcome to my blog. The popular, but controversial, Wildlife 2015,  kicks off on Saturday 6th June, so this week I'll be posting a series of mini-blogs on our two-day music festival.
     This post deals with the event from a policing point of view.

Inspector Allan Lowe, Head of Adur and Worthing Neighbourhood Policing Team

 "Prime responsibility for the planning of the event, including the site and the immediate area, rests with the organisers SJM concerts who have been liaising closely with Adur District Council and ourselves.

Our remit is to support this local event by keeping the public safe and dealing with any anti-social behaviour. Therefore, there will be a significantly increased police presence in Shoreham town, on the local roads, particularly the A27, and at Shoreham railway station. Specialist teams, such as the dogs and motorcycle units and the police helicopter will be on hand, and there will be increased foot patrols. 

Our approach towards the revellers will be firm but friendly, and we will actively engage with locals to see how the festival is affecting them. An event of this size means that people will need to be more tolerant than usual, but any anti-social behaviour will be dealt with.

The motorcycle unit will keep traffic moving smoothly, but they anticipate that the roads will be congested between 2pm – 6pm and again from about 11pm – midnight. It would therefore be advisable to avoid these periods or give yourself plenty of extra travelling time. Real time updates on travel conditions will appear on the Sussex Police twitter account.

British Transport police will be posted to Shoreham railway station to deal with the increased passengers numbers and peak time there is expected during the late evening.

If you call 101, (non-emergencies) or 999, (emergencies), you will be put through to the dedicated Wildlife control room.

We handle the planning for events like Pride and football matches and don’t feel that we could be better prepared than we already are and we would advise everyone to carry on with their normal routine.”

My thanks to Inspector Lowe for contributing to this blog. 

On Wednesday, I'll be posting on the Council's remit which includes parking, waste collection and noise. 

Thanks for dropping by and see you in a couple of days.