Christmas Lights chaos: Birmingham council defends event

Nov 15 2009

A council today defended its organisation of a free Christmas lights switch-on event that saw scores of people injured.

Birmingham City Council was investigating today after four people needed hospital treatment and 60 others were injured when a crowd surged forward during a performance by JLS, breaching a metal barrier put in place to protect members of the public.

The free event, set to feature a host of chart-topping acts, including the Sugababes, Tinchy Stryder, Chipmunk, Little Boots and Alexandra Burke, was cancelled as paramedics set up a medical unit at Birmingham's Millennium Point to treat the injured.

The council's assistant director for sport and events Steve Hollingworth said the authority had done everything it could to plan for the event, and had made the right decision in cancelling after the breach of the fence.

He said they would now have to think carefully about putting on similar free events in the city.

His comments came as the council came under fire from local MP Khalid Mahmood, who said bad planning had led to the near disaster.

Children's Secretary Ed Balls told Sky News' Sunday Live that safety experts would be speaking to Government ministers about the incident to make sure there were no problems or breaches in the rules.

But Mr Hollingworth today said the event had been thoroughly planned for estimated numbers of 20,000.

He said: "We planned for the event with the emergency services, we put measures in place. We were expecting a crowd of around 20,000 people which our measures took account of.

"We put a perimeter fence in place to make sure we could monitor the numbers of people in the arena, and at 1.30pm we closed the arena."

But he said towards the end of a set by X Factor runners-up JLS, the crowd that had not been able to get inside the arena surged forward, breaching the perimeter fence.