The annual street party in Notting Hill dates back to 1966 and draws millions of people to the area [Romazur_ CC BY-SA 3.0]

THE fallout of a leaked letter from the chairman of the Notting Hill Carnival organising committee, Ian Comfort, to culture secretary Lisa Nandy calling for government funds to keep the August bank holiday party going has echoed across Westminster this week, and ended up at City Hall.

The annual street party, dating from 1966 and the largest of its type in Europe – and second only to the Rio Carnival – draws around two million people to the area each August.

The letter said the event’s size was now causing “critical safety concerns”.

The arguments over how it is policed have been aired over many years and as its success continues, the Met have also expressed fears over managing the huge crowds safely.

London mayor Sir Sadiq Khan added his voice for central funds to be allocated.

“My team is speaking to the government as I speak,” he said yesterday (Thursday) at Mayor’s Question Time.

“I have got to be quite frank, though: City Hall and the two councils [Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea] have given the maximum we can financially. We would need the government to step in.”

The GLA has put around £1million a year into helping the event proceed.

He said he had listened to police officers about the issues of keeping people safe on the west London streets over the carnival bank holiday.

“The police have raised some concerns, which I share, about the carnival being the victim of its own success, and there being such numbers at the carnival that there are concerns around surging and, forgive my language, crushing, in terms of people at certain pinch-points,” he added.

“On the advice of the police, the carnival trust has asked an independent team to go and do a review of safety at the carnival. They have prepared a report.

“That leads to additional expenditure being required to address some of the issues raised by the review.

“There is a funding gap, so the carnival’s trust has written to the government to ask for their financial support.”

Other options – making it a ticketed event and moving it to Hyde Park – have previously been aired and look set to be mooted again.

But as Harrington can testify, the Notting Hill Carnival is unique precisely because it takes place in the area’s streets: it gives those attending a sense of freedom, of relaxing and partying in surroundings that are not usually used for such festivities.

It makes it special and gives the organisers a special headache to solve, too.

The cost may sound like a hefty slab of investment, but the economic returns far outweigh the spend and the cultural capital of this annual celebration of Anglo-Caribbean London arts is global.

The issues can be solved with investment and political will.

And for London, they must be.