Chelmsford City Racecourse has had its license cut to 10,000 people for live shows following disorder at Chelmsford City Live at the venue in July.
Promoted by Live Nation’s Cuffe & Taylor, Chelmsford City Live saw Justin Timberlake’s 30,000 capacity followed by major traffic congestion that reportedly led people to walk home via a busy road. That led Essex Police to put the licencing for live events at the venue under review with the latest update allowing live events to continue but reducing its capacity by 20,000.
Chelmsford City Council’s licensing committee agreed to reduce the capacity after hearing from the city council’s Public Health and Protection Services manager Lewis Mould.
Lawyer Philip Kolvin represented the racecourse at the committee and argued against the reduced capacity, but his argument was rejected with the committee describing July’s incident as a “catastrophic failure in operational management.”
The new licence is only for live concerts and will not be applied for horse racing events.
Chelmsford City Racecourse CEO Nathan Holmes said, “The safety of our visitors has always been and remains our highest priority, and we sincerely apologise to our guests and local residents for the disruption caused. While we are disappointed that new conditions will be applied to standalone music events, it has been overwhelming to see so much support for our venue throughout this process.”
A statement released by the licensing committee suggested the traffic congestion caused injury risks: “The public, by venturing onto the A131 in their 100s as pedestrians, were potentially at risk of sustaining serious injury or even death, and furthermore, there was widespread traffic disruption which amounted to a public nuisance which detrimentally impacted, among others, residents in the locality and motorists.”