NOTTING HILL CARNIVAL
While the total attendance of the event often reaches around 2 million across the three days, at any one time the audience peaks at approximately 300,000, says Phillip. As with any event of such enormous scale, security is a complex undertaking.
The event’ s CEO says this year’ s NHC saw the deployment of nearly 3,500 stewards from six companies including Mackenzie Arnold, Patriots Security, Embassy Solutions and Vespasian Security, alongside the internal Notting Hill Carnival stewarding programme.
“ It’ s not a small number of stewards, and this year we realigned and sectorised their positioning so that there was no overlap anywhere. That worked really well,” says Phillip.“ When it comes to the core NHC stewards they are based at key entry points to facilitate the sound systems and bands coming in, and then a big contingent of that is for our judging zone area to facilitate that.”
Overseeing the Control Room for NHC was Controlled Events MD Rob Walley. Phillip says that the complexity of the security operation and the team involved have grown significantly in recent years:“ For us, as organisers, it started with me and two or three other people around the table, surrounded by agencies. Now internally, for Notting Hill Carnival, we had around 60 people in the space, and then supporting agencies such as the London Fire Brigade, London Ambulance Service, St John Ambulance, the police and two local authorities. It takes a lot of people to coordinate and manage Carnival safely.”
A sound system
Phillip says that enhanced security measures at this year’ s event included improved connectivity across radios and CCTV coverage, which was enabled by Pylon One.
“ Pylon One created a fantastic system for us. I can’ t sing their praises high enough. We had really good coverage across the footprint with zero dropouts,” he says.
“ WE HAVE PROVEN NOW WHAT WE CAN DO GIVEN THE RIGHT RESOURCES.”
Phillip says the improved connectivity and CCTV, together with investment in drones allowed for better operational control and the ability to prevent congestion before it occurred.
“ Operating drones in London for events is challenging because obviously you can’ t fly drones over crowds of people. Luckily for us, there were open spaces near the areas that we needed to get eyes on, which is where we were able to launch them. That was a key achievement for us; having that solid connectivity, being able to see the site from a central command point and communicate to our teams on the ground.
“ That gave us much more operational control on the individual components to work and coordinate and almost show call the parade to make sure that we were not getting congestion at points where previously we’ ve seen it happen.
“ When it comes to communicating and managing crowds, the reassurance piece is a vital tool for us. If you’ re on a Tube and you get stuck in a tunnel, there’ s a massive difference between being stuck there with no messaging and being told it will only be a few minutes.
“ At Carnival, if every 30 seconds you are given a message explaining why you are being stopped, how long you are likely to be stopped for and what the next steps are, it is very reassuring.
“ Following on from having the additional cameras, connectivity, and comms with all the bands and sound systems, having a big resource in terms of a student contingent to be able to support that and react was really helpful.”
Following this year’ s NHC, the Metropolitan Police said the event had“ passed largely without incident” and that the atmosphere was“ overwhelmingly positive and celebratory”.
Phillip says the findings of the NHC’ s customer engagement outreach at this year’ s event support the Met’ s findings, with data from 1,500 surveyed attendees showing that 66 % felt very safe and 83 % were confident they would have a great time.
“ I think Carnival, for us, has seen a massive transition in the last two years in terms of what we’ ve achieved. We’ ve always known that we needed to do more but never had the financial resources to be able to do it. We have proven now what we can do given the right resources.”
34 accessaa. co. uk