The iconic bank holiday festival, which celebrates the vibrant cultural influences of the Caribbean in London, has taken over the streets of West London each year since 1966.
However, growing concerns about the safety of people attending the busy festival have cast doubt over whether it can continue at such a scale in the coming years.
Speaking at City Hall, London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, admitted there were “huge concerns” about safety at the event and fears among local authorities that there were risks of a ‘mass casualty event’.
He also recalled seeing images of the Notting Hill crowds made him “frightened,” likening the busy settings as similar to the Hillsborough Disaster that claimed 97 lives in 1989.
Khan’s remarks came as the carnival’s chair Ian Comfort wrote to the UK’s Culture Secretary asking for urgent funding that was “essential to safeguarding the future and public safety of this iconic event”.
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In a leaked letter seen by the BBC, Mr Comfort said, “Limited resourcing has restricted the police service’s ability to respond to growing operational pressures.” He also said that crowd management was “now essential” and a lack of additional funding “risks compromising public safety and jeopardising the future of the carnival”.
Carnival attracts up to two million people to the streets of West London each year across the two-day event, and there are up to 50,000 performers and some 30 music stages and sound systems that guests can enjoy.
However, recent years have seen an uptick in crime, including two people killed in 2024 and eight stabbings during the two-day event, prompting calls for greater security and ensuring community safety.
Despite concerns, many groups that support Notting Hill Carnival are hopeful that a solution is found and that the celebrations can continue safely.
An Arts Council England spokesperson told The Standard: “While the Arts Council does not directly fund Notting Hill Carnival, we support a range of performances and artist workshops to happen as part of the annual event, both via open-access National Lottery Project Grants and our National Portfolio of funded organisations.
“Notting Hill Carnival is an important part of London’s cultural landscape, and we hope that a way forward can be found to ensure its continued success and, most importantly, the safety of those taking part and those watching.”
The Children’s Day Parade at Notting Hill Carnival
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What could enhanced safety measures look like?
According to Richard Bradshaw, Director of Rebel Safety, a company that does safety consultancy for film and events, Notting Hill needs to “fund more trained stewards to guide and direct the crowd, not just watch over it.”
Bradshaw also suggested real-time crowd monitoring with drones, to stagger public access areas if crowds get too big and test incident response plans. He also said it was important that organisers “identify and redesign known pinch points on the route.”
While several security experts The Standard approached suggested that drone technology could help ensure security, some also argued that more could be done to protect the narrow streets and keep revellers safe.
Police officers at the Children’s Day Parade, part of the Notting Hill Carnival celebration in west London on Sunday August 25 2024
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Rob Ellis, Managing Director of ATG Access, suggested that enhanced security barriers could help improve the security of such an event and reduce the risk of vehicle attack, which has seen an alarming rise in recent years.
“The challenge lies in protecting large crowds within tight street networks. With the tragic rise in vehicle-as-a-weapon attacks, crowded public events have increasingly become potential targets,” he said.
Ellis, whose company works within event security, explained: “Products can be deployed flexibly to only protect during these types of large-scale events if this is all that is required. Equally, systems can be put in place to permanently pedestrianise event spaces and the public realm. Crucially, these systems can provide robust protection to keep people safe without making the public realm feel like a fortress.”
Safety concerns related to the event aren’t new. In 2017, Khan told a meeting that provisions had been agreed to that reduced the number of sound systems and minimized the size of vehicles taking part in the parade.
At the time of writing, Mr Khan’s office hadn’t responded to requests from The Standard about how safety could be enhanced even further this year.