Calls for review of Fest traffic management

Harewood Ward Councillors Matthew Robinson, Ryan Stephenson and Sam Firth said that residents in the area had been left with a ‘cacophony of festival traffic chaos’ caused by road closures for the popular event.

“Somebody in Leeds City Council’s leadership needs to get a grip on this situation for future years,” the councillors said in joint statement to the Wetherby News.

“As councillors, we sought to engage early with festival organisers and traffic management to ensure that plans for this year’s Leeds Festival were communicated clearly and in good time.

“Despite this, we were notified in the early hours of Wednesday morning that agreed plans were being ripped up and a hard closure of the A64 entrance of Aberford was to be enforced with immediate effect.

“This is simply unacceptable. Residents had been given details of road closures in advance so they could plan their journeys, only to discover that all that had been overridden, overnight, without consultation.”

They explained that the problems had been made worse because of motorway improvement works and the major construction work of the ELOR (East Leeds Orbital Road).

Residents in Scholes and Barwick-in-Elmet have also seen the closure of Leeds Road and reduced access to the A64, which has caused many complaints on social media in recent weeks.

“In Scholes and Barwick-in-Elmet we’ve seen similar instances of Leeds City Council agreeing to multiple closures at the same time causing a cacophony of traffic chaos in east Leeds,” added the councillors.

“In our opinion, there needs to be a full review of the traffic management plans.

“It was completely unessesary to have a hard closure in Aberford for the duration of the festival and the leadership of Leeds City Council need a much more coordinated approach to multiple road closures.”

A spokesman for Leeds City Council said: “We always endeavour to ensure any highways management for large events is planned and publicised by the organisers in advance as much as possible so we can minimise disruption to all road users.

“The arrangements for this year’s event followed the same principles as for previous year’s events.

“One change involved a closure in Aberford which was included this year following feedback from previous Leeds Festival events and is understood to have been largely successful in keeping festival traffic out of the village. This change followed discussions with the police.

“As is always the case for this event, there will be a de-brief meeting with the police and the organisers to review any issues and feedback as part of our planning for subsequent events so we can improve on the traffic management arrangements in the future.

“Our monitoring of the event showed that the highway network in the area was busy but in line with expectations given the scale of the event with an estimated 90,000 people attending over the Bank Holiday weekend.”