Brighton Carnival has been cancelled with just a week before the event was due to take place in Madeira Drive.
One of the organisers of the free event, formerly known as the Kemp Town Carnival, posted an announcement yesterday evening (Saturday 3 June).
It said: “It is with immeasurable sadness, disappointment, frustration and shock that we have to report that the licence for this year’s carnival was withdrawn by the council just before close of business yesterday (Friday 2 June).
“One of the most humbling aspects of volunteering for over a year on a free community music festival – the last, we believe, of its kind on the south coast – has been the huge amount of goodwill and love for the carnival itself.
“Over 400 volunteers were ready to give their time and energy, artist rehearsals had taken place, contractors were booked and time and financial outlay already sunk.
“It hurts us to know that some of you reading this will be among those who have lost out in this respect.
“This is of course in addition to the loss to the community of the event itself which, for us, was the start of this whole journey.
“We respect the decision of the events team at the council and the team themselves, who have expressed a desire to work with the carnival on a future event.
“It has been an absolute privilege to work with all involved and we could wish more success for the future of the carnival.
“Until yesterday (Friday) we truly believed that we were set to buck the sad trend of the closure of our local community volunteer-run festivals and are side-swiped by this decision.”
This was not Kemptown carnival. It was another event taking advantage of the goodwill built up by the former, fabulous Kemptown carnival.
Hi Frank,
Love the new, cleaner, layout for your web stories.
Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to work well on my Android phone using the MS Edge browser where text runs in a narrow column down the side of adverts.
Tried Chrome browser and this won’t work at all.
Have switched off adverts on your site and sticking with Edge for now.
Hi Frank – got Chrome working – same problem with text wrapping around adverts 😞
Same exact issue here on Chrome for Pixel 6a
I use Brave, it’s Chromium but with built-in adblockers.
The coucil seem to want to turn all the free spirited events in Brighton into paid events where you have to pay for entry and then pay expensive prices for drinks as well. I remember the Brighton May festival used to have the speigal tent area open without security fences all around it and you could either bring your own drinks or get some from the bar. Now you’re forced to get them from the bar for £7 a pint and the bar is owned by the Laines group that owns around 40 pubs in brighton which is why you have the same drinks on tap in so many pubs. A lot of people don’t realise that this monopoly is going on! Its the same with the pride street party and the beach cinema. The greed is sadly changing the spirit and character of brighton onto a little London on sea
The council continue to turn Brighton into a very unfriendly and unwelcome place to be in – unless you are a beggar, drug dealer or graffiti moron.
Where’ve you been the last 30 years?
It all started with the Criminal Justice Act in the mid-nineties.
Anyone that puts on a free event was suddenly treated as a criminal and now as a terrorist!
Meanwhile the punters are treated like sheep and milked for their cash.
All in the name of public safety and security.
Shameful.
We, the people have to resist this banalisation of our lives and opportunities!
Unfortunately these events have to generate income in order to take place. Obviously it’s great to be able to bring your own cheap drink and food, but that doesn’t help with the running costs.
Have you heard of the Baron David Ward Affidavit? You can view it at bdwfacts.com So get everything back on track as the Council do not have the right, in any way shape or form to stop you as you have not signed over your power of attorney to them to govern you and this is case law. Please read the affidavit and I urge all others who read this to do the same.
I would like to know the reason they gave for cancelling at such short notice. So many people gave up their time to put this on and planned for it for months / weeks. I’m going to write to the council to find out if it isn’t made public very soon. This is totally outrageous…
Probably due to the carnival organisers not being able to satisfy the licence requirements in some way such as public liability insurance and security which are the organisers responsibility to provide not the councils.
Council officials would have been reluctant to cancel the event (because they know they are important to the city) but without things like that in place they cannot permit the event to take place.
I imagine Chris has the right way of it. A planned gathering of that size has some considerable medical requirements to run for example and I know SECAmb are unlikely to have the resource to provide for such an event without detracting from its frontline duties.
It’s outrageous that the council have done this at such short notice, especially with all the organisation involved not to mention the money it would generate for local business etc shame on Brighton and Hove city council,it’s a shame that the organisers couldn’t just go ahead with it anyway,I guess the council couldn’t care less about all the time and effort to organise this event very disappointing a lot of people would have been looking forward to it.
Having lived out of Brighton for more than 30 years, I’m saddened to see that every August when I come home, my Brighton of yesterday, here is disappearing for fun. Are used to always buy rock from the numerous rock shops to bring people expats of England to Brighton and show them the lovely areas. I don’t understand the transition if I lived in London I have a free bus pass over 60, but in Brighton is 65 …. I can’t hire a car and park it outside my mother’s home as it is residence parking only I can’t park in Churchill Square and have a full day and evening meal without a parking ticket costing me £25. You can’t park on the seafront and feed a metre, there’s not enough time for tourists to walk the seafront. Have lunch go on the pier and go shopping. They have to move their car. I’ve got my first speeding ticket for doing 25 miles an hour. It’s totally ridiculous. Do yesterday year of Brighton had trams running from the station , what a beautiful thing to reinstall if they don’t want you to use your car do yesteryear of Brighton add cheese, shops independent bread, shops, beautiful cake shops, lovely old teahouses and don’t get me started on the west pier … or Kemptown seafront,…. I think the people of Brighton need to get together and make their own party or at least find MPs that are on the side of soul traders 🙏
“owned by the Laines group that owns around 40 pubs in brighton which is why you have the same drinks on tap in so many pubs. A lot of people don’t realise that this monopoly is going on”
So 40 pubs in Brighton is a monopoly, do the the maths
Yet another big mistake from brighton and hove city council they will never learn
The Kemptown festival was always such a great event for everyone. All the work and money put in for the council to stop this at short notice is just plain wrong.
The council is not representing the people.
Sorry to all those who have worked so hard peace and love 🕊❤️
No it wasn’t if you lived in the middle of it, I’m glad to have finally seen the back of that alchol fuelled drunk fest with people pissng in peoples doorways and drug dealing going on down the sidestreets. The organisers didn’t give a shit about the residence, they just took over for the day and expected us to fall in line with them and what they wanted . Stupid hippies banging on drums and dancing as if they were black is not my idea of a carnival! Good riddance to it!
Mask slipped a little on that last sentence eh?
Killjoys strike again.! Greens were bad enough with their lunatic planning blunders ,now we have the assorted champagne sociakists sticking their oar in.
This decision would have been taken by offiers not councillors.
Wrong people to complain about, Hussar.
This is the tip of the iceberg unless labour can charge people for enjoyment nothing will happen,and it will get worse if starmer runs the country after the next election.
Good riddance to the Kemptown Carnival and the so called Brighton Carnival!
Could all the knee-jerkers on here just calm down for a bit, please. We do not know who made this decision, but, as Chris C says, it is likely to be council officers and not the political administration. Secondly, the organisers must have been told why the licence was pulled, but they have chosen not to say what the given reason was, although they must surely know. No doubt, the reason will be revealed in due course.
Very reasoned comment here. I’d be curious to know what part wasn’t satisfied. Last-minute closing makes me think the council had been holding off for as long as possible for something to get into place but never did. We’ll hopefully find out soon enough!
Green deliver, Tories whither and Labour dither