Notting Hill Carnival: Met chief says event is ‘poorly run’

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley has said the Notting Hill Carnival is a “poorly run event” and has “deep concerns” about crowd risks.

He said the annual carnival was “not run by experts in event management” and feared a “mass fatality event” through crushing, like the Hillsborough disaster.

Sir Mark was speaking during a meeting of the London Policing Board at City Hall on Thursday.

The organisers, Notting Hill Carnival Ltd, have said they had “experts from all areas of event organisation” and had 3,300 stewards this year to help manage crowds.

Sir Mark said he had “complete support” for the event but was “deeply concerned” about its safety, with an estimated one million people taking to the streets of west London.

The commissioner said police should “only be at an event to deal with crime and disorder issues” and that the crowd management of any event was the responsibility of the event organisers.

He added: “They struggle to discharge their responsibilities effectively and we try to rescue the situation. So we put in mitigations to try and reduce the risk of a Hillsborough-type event.”

He said this was not an effective way to manage or police the carnival.

His comments come after Assistant Commissioner Matt Twist said the organisers “did not have enough stewards” on shift over the carnival weekend.

Sir Mark said: “With crime, it is less about the numbers than the severity. It was over 300 arrests, there were two murders at this year’s carnival and I think there were six other stabbings, and 60-70 weapons recovered.

“This is a very different arrest profile to what you would see at even at the most difficult football matches or Glastonbury, or something like that,” he added.

“Crime control is much harder because it’s a poorly run event. It’s not run by experts in event management in the way that most big events are.”

He told the board that the Met had a “very positive” relationship with the event organisers and that officers had met with them, together with the local authorities, to work on a “reset” on the way carnival is organised.

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, responded to the comments by telling the board: “It’s really important the commissioner airs his concerns.”

He emphasised that the carnival was not run by City Hall nor by the Metropolitan Police.

He told the board: “I’ve seen things (at carnival) that I can’t un-see and the commissioner has briefed me on things we can’t pretend we don’t know about.

“We’ll be working with organisers to try and address these concerns,” he added.

The organisers of the carnival, Notting Hill Carnival Ltd, have said there are inaccuracies in the Met’s response. It says the carnival is overseen by a number of events management experts and safety advisers.

In terms of crowd control, a spokesperson told the BBC: “We do not recognise any situation in which it was required for the police to be called in to help with crowd management.”

They added: “When the police did take these actions, it was not always communicated across the organising team, which is vital to how the event runs.

“And it was not done under consultation as was agreed in the event plan. When the police did act, it had a negative impact, causing greater crowding issues.”

The spokesperson told the BBC: “We have lost the trust in the Metropolitan Police as a partner in the running of Notting Hill Carnival. Their ongoing rhetoric suggests they are not a co-operating partner.”