First of all, my apologies for taking so long in responding to this comment. There were some serious allegations made and I wanted to investigate them fully before making them.

Second, my apologies that you do not feel the council has been helpful. Obviously organising an event like this can be time-consuming and stressful. I’m sorry that you feel the council have added to this.

I would like to respond to the criticisms made in point 3, the council cannot confirm that you spent ‘over about 15 hours’ dealing with them over the phone, since those sort of records are not kept. However, as you illustrate in your comment a road closure is not simply a case of blocking off a road for a few hours, the council has to follow a legal procedure, consideration has to be made of the effect of that closure on other traffic and emergency vehicle access if needed. This is further complicated when a number of roads may be closing, since the overall effect needs to be considered. The council holds a duty of care towards all residents, whether they are partaking in The Big Lunch or not – and need to ensure that events are properly, and safely, organised.

With regard to the cost the council couldn’t be specific about how many streets would be sharing the cost, since not all had confirmed they were going ahead. You are right, however, the costs basically consist of the ad we are required to take-out in the local paper (which consumes the lion’s share of the fee) and the council’s administration. I’m guessing from point 5 that you feel you should not have had to pay any fee. However, I am not sure everyone else should have to pay for the few street parties taking place. Given that the admin costs would come to somewhere between £1-2 per person, I do not think it is unreasonable to ask people to contribute towards their own party. Wandsworth is far from alone in charging a fee (and I suspect probably in the majority).

The insurance aspect seems to be fairly common practice. I know other London boroughs require organisers to arrange their own insurance. Indeed, I note the Big Lunch were promoting a deal they had arranged to provide a special rate to organisers – which suggests that an insurance requirement is common nationwide.

Finally, I am sorry to hear that you feel the council has been negative. Certainly with regards to the officer responsible it would be totally out-of-character with a long period of service with the council and can only assume that there has been some misinterpretation of comments. I did follow up with The Big Lunch directly, but they did not corroborate your claim that Wandsworth is the worst council – indeed, they seemed positive about the way we are handling it.

And it just isn’t fair to suggest the council is ‘negative’, other parts of the council are involved in The Big Lunch (for example, the Community Safety Division have been invited and are attending one to provide crime prevention advice to residents).

I rather doubt I will change your view of the council. But hope that you have a successful day, the weather certainly looks like it will hold for the weekend.

Here’s how I did it:

1. designed letter telling the street about the party and asking for their support
2. delivered letter to 110 houses inviting them to a meeting
held meeting with 15 neighbours, some of which I had never met before; get response from 150 people on street that they want to take part in the party…yeah!!
3. spent about over 15 hours dealing with Wandsworth Council asking for their co-operation on the road closure. one call lasted an hour, and involved the guy telling me that I had to submit a road management strategy document, hire road signs (but it was up to me to research which legal road sign I should use), inform the necessary emergency services, again, refusal to help identify which people I needed to speak to. Too tedious to relate whole story, wish I had taped some of the conversations, they were hilarious (one involve the guy talking about how we needed insurance in case anyone ‘burnt their mouth on a sausage…unlikely to happen to my Muslim neighbours but I’ll keep a watch out on the day) but it went on for 2 months and was an utterly negative and draining experience. I am in contact with another street organiser who has had exactly the same experience, and resulted in us both having to engage with Sadiq Khan to help us out. Council refuse to give transparency on the £1,200 cost we are sharing between 5/6/7 street (they are vague about this). We believe it is a mixture of costs for a newspaper ad to tell people that a residential street in Balham will be closed for 4 hours on a Sunday afternoon and ‘admin’. The Big Lunch have been working with local councils for 2 years on this project, and Wandsworth are coming through as the most inflexible and unsupportive. The main person I have been dealing with has been very offensive about the whole project, and called the Big Lunch organisers a bunch of idiots who didn’t know what they were doing.
4. feel very demotivated that everyone in the street is up for this but energy draining having to keep communicating with such negative people at Wandsworth Council
5. collect money from street to cover the cost of placing ad in paper, would have been wonderful for the party not to have had a cost attached to it as it is our street
6. resolve to just reclaim the street next year…