Winterville had a very successful 5 and bit weeks run on Clapham Common. With more family focused activities on offer this year the event has proved very popular with all age groups.
The doors closed to the public on Sunday 23rd December and with the exception of Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Years Day the site crew have been working to load out the event infrastructure.
The Lambeth Events team have monitored the event build, operational and now load out periods. Throughout all stages of the event we had observed excellent working practices that have ensured a safe and well run event site, for both public and staff.
As I mentioned in the blog post pre Winterville opening, there were additional measures in place this year of which the 3 key areas were:
a) Increased ground protection
b) Robust vehicle management on site
c) All built structures are elevated and have temporary flooring – ensuring a gap between floor and grass for air circulation
We have seen a vast improvement on the condition of the ground post event that what was not seen this time last year.
HOWEVER
There is impact to the ground, as there is with any event coming off the common.
You will see when the fence line comes down over the next few days something like this – Lush Green Grass, Yellow Grass and Brown areas where there is surface mud on top of grass. The picture below we took at our site visit today and clearly shows different types and areas of impact from the event.
Example of variation of ground conditions post event
NEXT STEPS
Talbot Landscapes are the company who will be managing the reinstatement of the Winterville event site. They are contracted directly by Winterville. They begin their work tomorrow Friday 4th January by putting up temporary fence line as the steel shield fence comes down. Once all the internal track way is lifted and removed which will be no later Monday 7th January the full site assessment will take place. An independent agronomist report is done and then the EventLambeth and Winterville will undertake a full ground assessment on Tuesday 8th January. From there we agree the scope of work that will be undertaken by Winterville in order to return the Common back to the same condition it was before the event build began.
It is likely that the over the coming weeks subject to weather conditions there will be work done to fill holes and break surface dirt to encourage the grass to come back through. A wider scope of work will be undertaken and the full proposed schedule of what this work is and when it will be done will be agreed next week. I will have details of this in next blog post.
Winterville has, due to the additional ground protection measures and robust management, had less impact then the previous year. With contractors on site starting to prepare the ground for reinstatement and mild weather conditions forecasted for the coming week, we are confident that areas will show visual improvement sooner and full reinstatement will be done to enable the ground is returned to public use much quicker than what was experienced previously.
We’ll keep you updated on work schedules and progress.
Please note that as with all events the ground reinstatement costs are covered by the event organisers.