As part of the Jubilee celebrations in June, communities are being encouraged to come together to celebrate. One way is to hold some form of community event such as a picnic, lunch or street party.
There’s been plenty of advice online about how to organise this, including in the latest issues of the Ourwatch e-newsletter (here). There is also their ‘how to organise a street party’ flyer here.
But if you’re going all in and organising a street party then you’ll need to consider closing your street to traffic.
To do this you need to get permission from North East Lincolnshire Council. And this needs to be done well in advance. Applications need to be submitted by 15th April 2022 at the latest.
The general advice about events and road closures is on the NELC website here https://www.nelincs.gov.uk/licencing/event-safety-advisory-group/
Government advice on organising a street party should also be referred to here https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/your-guide-to-organising-a-street-party
But the biggest source of information about street parties or community events is via the main national organisers – the Eden Project – here https://www.edenprojectcommunities.com/the-big-jubilee-lunch
Worth a read of it all – there’s plenty to consider well in advance for organising a party!
They also have advice on closing your road here https://www.edenprojectcommunities.com/blog/how-to-close-your-road-for-the-jubilee-weekend and in more detail here https://www.edenprojectcommunities.com/make-it-happen/close-a-road
Permission from NELC
So the first step is to contact our council with your plans and to get permission. Not every street can be easily closed, so this needs to be assessed quickly. Remember to do it before 15th April.
Description provided by NELC on how to do this…
To begin the process of organising a street closure for the Queen’s Jubilee, we would kindly ask that each individual event organiser completes an Event Safety Advisory Group (ESAG) form. To do this, please follow the below link, scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the ‘Submit an ESAGE Request’ button.
https://www.nelincs.gov.uk/licencing/event-safety-advisory-group/
The Traffic Team will do a light touch review of these to ensure that services to all of our communities, like bin rounds, are thought about in the planning. The ESAG form is also distributed to other interested teams and organisations within the borough, such as the emergency services, to make them aware of planned events.
Please provide as much information as you can at this stage; we will come back to you if we need more details. The final deadline for applications is Friday 15th April 2022, which will allow the Council enough time to process the legal road closure orders.
The important thing here is to submit the ESAG form soon. The form is all online and asks a lot of questions but these are not complicated once you’ve planned your event.
Essentially you will be asked for:
your contact information;
details of the event – what, when, where
Safety information & risk assessments
Highways / parking etc – this is where you ask for road closure
Insurance and licences – where you will need to explain your insurance cover
Make sure you make it clear that your event is linked to the jubilee and then NELC will be doing a light touch review of your application. Of course if they need additional information they will get in touch with you.
Insurance
You should also think about insurance for your event (public liability).
IF you are a formally approved Neighbourhood Watch Group and you are organising the event as your group, then you will have insurance as part of the national OurWatch insurance scheme. To be approved, I need to have your group formally on my database. So if we’ve not spoken in the last year please make sure you get in touch with me (karl@vanel.org.uk). There is information on the Ourwatch site here https://www.ourwatch.org.uk/PLI about insurance and risk assessments.
If you’re not a NW group then you may need to organise your own insurance. Again read the pages from Eden Project as they have organised cheap, appropriate insurance which you should be able to purchase for your event.
Conclusions
A major event like a community street party does not just happen. There’s only a couple of months to go now, so get reading, planning and organising!
If you are planning an event then you can register it on the Eden Project website for all to see. We’d also be interested to hear locally what you are up to – so please let me know.
If you choose to organise an event – have a great one!