The annual Bradley Stoke Fireworks Display is to remain at the Jubilee Centre in 2011, despite concerns over crowd safety being raised following last year’s event.
Cllr Mark Forsyth, Senior Health and Safety Officer for last year’s display, had warned that the event had “become too successful for its own good” and a meeting was arranged between the firework company, the event management company and Council officers to discuss a way forward.
Last week’s meeting of the Town Council was told that a plan has been agreed to launch the fireworks from the upper football pitch, leaving the lower football pitch available for spectators.
Firework sizes and types will be adjusted (reaching 250ft rather than 350ft) in order to comply with regulations relating to the proximity of buildings.
One day soon Health and Safety and insurers will do for events like this. Some of the extra regulations were needed, mind you. As a teenager at an early public event elsewhere, I remember a glowing spent rocket thumping into the ground and sticking there like a javelin about two feet from where I stood.
Firework displays sometimes bring the same thought to mind as Middle Eastern political rallies: when all that stuff is fired rat-a-tat into the air, where does it come down? Some of the thronging crowd must get clattered over the head occasionally by a spent shell and I’m sure it would bring up a nasty lump.