NEW security measures have forced changes onto plans for the Remembrance parade in Keynsham.
In the past, temporary road closures to allow the parade to proceed along its route have been controlled by lightweight plastic barriers.
But this year, following police advice, Keynsham Town Council will use hostile vehicle mitigation (HVM) barriers which – as well as being expensive to hire – are more robust and harder to manoeuvre.
Therefore, organisers have decided to shorten the route of this year’s parade, which takes place on Sunday November 10. Instead of assembling and dispersing in Ashton Way, the parade will start and finish in the High Street.
Following a service at St John’s Church at 9.30am, the parade will make its way along the High Street and down Bath Hill to the Memorial Gates at the park.
The Remembrance service will start at 11am and last about 20 minutes, after which the parade will head back up Bath Hill to the High Street before dispersing. The use of HMV barriers was prompted when Bath & North East Somerset Council approached the town council and advised it to contact a police counter-terrorism officer, who then gave the new security advice.
This has left the town council with a new bill of £4,000 for using the barriers for the Remembrance parade, and one of £5,000 for using them at Keynsham Winter Festival on Saturday November 30.
Hal MacFie, chair of the town council, stressed that the new security measures and their high cost would not “undermine” the parade.
He said: “We have a budget at KTC that covers the costs and we have been through the plans in detail with the staff and are confident that, with the portable nature of these barriers, we can keep the main body of participants protected from a vehicle attack.”
But the measures have still left the town council with an unexpectedly high bill this year, which will be paid using its events reserve fund.
Town councillors resolved at a meeting in September that “BANES officers are notified that we have followed advice and have incurred this at an extortionate cost, which is made worse by B&NES Council’s increased event fees and additional costs for parking suspensions etc. that have never been charged before.”
Councillor MacFie said: “We are very disturbed by these expenses.”
But he added that he hoped that, as use of HMV barriers became more widespread throughout the country for such public events, the cost of hiring them would become “more reasonable.”
Meanwhile, Alan Hale, an independent ward councillor for Keynsham, has criticised B&NES Council for its role in “springing” the new security advice on the town council at short notice.
He said: “This parade has been held, presumably since very shortly after the end of hostilities in World War 2, with no risk or threat ever made to it.
“The district council should be supporting the communities marking the Remembrance, not referring them to a profit-making company via the terrorism officer who had not been proactive, bearing in mind this happens every November throughout the country.”
Councillor Hale also criticised B&NES Council for spending £10 million on anti-terrorism bollards in Bath but giving no funding to “the town councils within B&NES so that they can more readily honour those who gave their lives for this country and our freedom.”
The Voice approached B&NES Council for comment but received no reply before this article was posted.
Pictured, the parade in Keynsham last year
Keynsham Remembrance parade security costs soar
