By Lucy Phillips
26 April 2011
Councils across England and Wales have been ‘inundated’ with applications for road closures to hold royal wedding street parties, according to the Local Government Association.
With only a few days to go before Prince William marries Kate Middleton, the LGA said councils across both nations had received about 5,500 requests for street party road closures on April 29.
London borough councils have dealt with more than 800 applications while Bristol has received 54 and Cardiff 53. Celebrations look set to be rife across Hertfordshire and Surrey too, where the councils have received 298 and 205 requests respectively.
Thousands of other street parties and celebrations that do not require official permission are expected to be held on top of these.
Chris White, chair of the LGA’s culture, tourism and sport programme board, said: ‘Councils across the country have pulled out all the stops to make organising royal wedding street parties as easy as possible.’
Some councils had given out grants to support communities in marking the special occasion, while others had put together free ‘party packs’ for organiser containing bunting and flags, he said.
White rebutted claims from Westminster that councils had been making it unnecessarily complicated for residents to hold street parties.
He said: ‘Despite sterling efforts in going above and beyond their statutory duties, council staff have had to shoulder repeated and often disingenuous claims of being overly bureaucratic. Many of these criticisms have come direct from government ministers, and the vast majority have been totally erroneous and ill-founded.
‘It is testament to councils’ positive approach that so far they have dealt with about 5,500 road closure applications as well as numerous other street party requests where they have taken a very light touch approach, simply offering guidance when requested.‘
