Park neighbours win tighter rules on showground use

Neighbours of a West Lothian public park have won assurances of tighter conditions on the use of the open space by travelling fairs.

Livingston residents won the promises following calls for a review of rules by local councillor Maria MacAulay last year.

Neighbours of Livingston’s Howden Park said they had suffered from the noise, as well as public disturbance, dog fouling, broken glass, and even having human waste tossed into their gardens, as well as abuse from visitors.

The park is used in the summer as a fairground venue for three or four days at a time.

A report said: “There are already informal arrangements in place to restrict the number of events which take place on council land which, by their nature, are likely to require a degree of remediation to the land.

“Most parks used for funfairs and circuses benefit from hard standing. However, Howden Park has no hard standing, being all grassed. It is therefore less resilient to weather and receives damage readily from vehicles on the land.”

In her report to this month’s meeting of the Public and Community Safety PDSP Julie Whitelaw, the committee’s lead officer, said: “There are also more frequent complaints from neighbouring residents related to the funfairs or circus at Howden Park than at any other location across West Lothian.

“In order to minimise the damage to Howden Park and to mitigate the impact of major events such as circuses and fairgrounds on neighbouring residents and businesses, it is proposed that a formal policy should be adopted whereby major events on Howden Park are restricted to once per calendar year.”

Mrs Whitelaw added that council officers had also won a promise from the Showmen’s Guild, the trade organisation for travelling fairgrounds and a new condition would be added to West Lothian rules.

The report added: “The Showmen’s Guild is accepted at both national and local levels as the negotiating and representative body for Show people. They operate as a regulated Trade Association, not only for members, but also for local authorities to resolve issues and complaints. Benchmarking of the approach to enforcement undertaken by other authorities identified that a number of local authorities have included in their conditions of let for fairgrounds and circuses a requirement that any operator must be a member of the Showmen’s Guild.”

The new conditions will also improve communication with the local communities regarding the sighting of events at Howden Park and on on other sites of council land.

Councillor MacAulay said: “I’m really pleased to see that my motion has gone through the appropriate channels and the council had discussions with Showmen’s Guild and that was a long time coming. I’m really pleased to see the results of that.

“ I know that residents who had contacted me had not ever wanted to stop events but they just wanted to feel involved, so this paper today highlights that and I’m really pleased to see that the communication will be working, especially for Howden community council who really were the ones raising this issue with me.

“I want to thank everyone involved for the work they have done because it is really important for those who were suffering slightly. “