I AM writing to politely correct The Argus on some of its post-Pride editorial content that contains inaccuracies and is misleading.

Whilst the main picture on Tuesday (Sex, Drugs and Toilet Roll) does show the residents’ property in the foreground, the majority of the people in the image are actually on the main road that was part of the planned egress from Preston Park that was cleared in 30 minutes.

In the years since the park has been fenced and managed the overwhelming response from residents and partner agencies has been positive.

Brighton & Hove Pride contract additional security stewards to manage areas inside and outside the Pride Festival site and many months of planning went in to the egress at the end of the evening to ensure it was swift and safe with minimal disruption to residents.

With 55,000 attendees at the Pride Festival, regretfully a relatively small number of people entered residential side roads looking for a shortcut to Brighton Station or back into the City.

Indeed, comments on the article online include: “I was in that crowd and where it was inevitably a very large crowd, there was a very clear route to walk and stewards and police everywhere pointing in the right direction”, and Mackie46; “I live in Nestor Court.

These accusations are grossly exaggerated, some residents are alarmist and have a very vivid imagination.....these reports are totally untrue. The partygoers were very respectful of residents wishes and retreated when they were told there was no through route.”

We sincerely apologise for any upset caused to the residents and will fully address these issues in our security and internal debriefs and put additional measures in place to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

We fully recognise that lessons are to be learned from this year’s event but the overarching response to this year’s Pride has been positive and this hasn’t been fairly represented in your editorial.

It has to be recognised that rubbish is often left on the beach on a hot busy weekend or bank holiday.

Pride will continue to push for a city-wide event plan around unofficial Pride activity across the City and how to engage businesses who benefit from Pride but don’t contribute to the extra resource needed to manage the city cleanup such as the off licences and licensed premises and food outlets who generate much of the rubbish across the city.

We acknowledge the impact the busy Pride weekend has on the city but there needs to be a collective responsibility with local businesses who benefit from the huge increase in visitors across the weekend if Pride is going to continue.

Paul Kemp
Managing Director