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St Mary’s Stadium Licensed for the Rocket Man
St Mary’s Stadium (home of Southampton Football Club) has secured the opportunity to hold concerts at the ground during the closed season, the first of which will feature prolific singer and song writer Elton John to a sold out crowd of 35,000 at the stadium in May.
St Mary’s are not alone in a year that sees a significant increase in the number of football stadiums hosting concerts in the UK to provide an additional revenue stream and bring entertainment to their areas during the closed season. Some have hosted concerts before, for others such as St Mary’s it is a first, but with all the potential for noise upsetting local residents is a major hurdle to over-come in securing the all-important entertainment license.
Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as telling the band to turn the volume down and there are many issues to consider with a host of measures that can be drawn upon to limit the noise. Acoustics specialists Capita Symonds have worked at hundreds of concerts across the UK and this year have also worked with Ipswich, Chelsea and Manchester City, as well as cricket clubs at Lancashire County Cricket Ground and the Rose Bowl to secure licenses to hold concerts during 2005.
Their wealth of experience dealing with licensing for concerts led the Capita Symonds team being brought in by the management of St Mary’s to help secure their licence. This meant looking at all of the factors at St Mary’s that could be controlled to ensure concerts will have a minimum impact on the local environment, considering potentially effected audiences in the planning application.
Jim Griffiths, director of acoustics at Capita Symonds explained: “We became involved with the St Mary’s planning application in June 2004, which entailed months of planning, listening to the concerns of local residents and we completed detailed noise predictions for every aspect of the concerts. This included careful design of the PA system to limit the noise pollution during the gig and sound checks, control of the noise generated by concert equipment being loaded in and out and regulating the times the music can be played.”
The approval process included two public meetings at the club to view the concerns of local residents and the noise conditions for the concerts were put into a proposal for planning approval. St Mary’s has now been granted planning permission to hold two concerts this year.
Jim continued: “It helped the planning process that this stadium is relatively new and has a fully continuous roof and facade, unlike some stadiums where there are often separate stands with gaps. This helped considerably in that we could demonstrate that the sound could be controlled more effectively so we were able to get the permission through in a relatively short space of time so concerts could be planned for 2005.”
As part of their consultation for the stadium, Capita Symonds will be monitoring the concerts when they take place, ensuring they stay within sound restriction levels and adhere to the conditions set down by the licensing authority.
27th April 2005
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