Anger over '˜dangerously' parked cars for Camber festival

People visiting Pontins’ Camber Sands Holiday Park for The Soundcrash Funk & Soul Weekender from Friday (May 13) to Sunday parked anywhere they could as no overfill car park was created.

Police said around 70 cars were parked on pavements but none were penalised as they did not cause ‘an immediate risk’.

Camber resident Alan Jones could not believe no action was taken against the motorists as he saw children and senior citizens being forced to walk in the road to get past the cars.

“This means no deterrent for them to do it again,” he said. “Next time they come they will park all over the pavements, having done so before, again putting the elderly, families and the disabled at risk by having to walk on the main highway.”

Police were called to inspect the situation on Saturday by concerned residents.

Inspector Dan Russell, of the Hastings and Rother neighbourhood policing team, said they would speak to the organisers about future parking arrangements.

“It basically resulted from a miscalculation on the part of the music festival organisers concerning the numbers attending,” he said.

“Unfortunately, no overspill car park had been created. Our patrols monitored the situation, which involved around 70 vehicles parking on pavements, but no penalty tickets were issued and no vehicles were removed because it was not assessed as causing an immediate risk.

“However, police will be talking to the organisers concerning arrangements for any similar events in the future.”

A Soundcrash spokesman said the train strike planned for that weekend but cancelled a month ago, caused more people than expected to drive to the event and ‘made it difficult’ to plan how many people how drive.

“In addition to the residents we ourselves were upset by the amount of cars that arrived at the event,” the spokesman said.

He added: “Although we had absolutely no control over the train strike, we’d like to extend a full apology to the residents in Camber.”

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