Residents hail PeaceOne Day efforts

People living near the iconic new Peace Bridge - which was sealed off for 24 hours to facilitate the concert featuring Pixie Lott, Imelda May and The Guillemots - had felt their concerns had not been sufficiently heard when it came to traffic management and access issues at Ebrington.

In response to these concerns ILEX vowed to watch and learn during Peace One Day to help ensure it passed off without headache for the beleaguered residents of Browning Drive and Limavady Road.

Residents wanted lessons to be learned with a further 50 planned events lined up for Ebrington during Londonderry UK City of Culture 2013.

Last Thursday the regeneration company’s Cultural Broker Caoimhín Corrigan accompanied fed-up residents around the former barracks during the Pixie Lott-headlined extravaganza.

After the concert the spokesperson for the Limavady Road Residents Group (LRRG) Adrian McAuley - who had criticised ILEX for not listening to residents - praised the regeneration company for ensuring Peace One Day was a “very positve experience” all round.

He welcomed the group would now review the event and send a full report to ILEX outlining its views.

Said Mr McAuley: “I’m delighted to report the event went extremely well. The Limavady Road was coned off all day and the side streets had barriers and stewards in place from 4.30pm.”

He also described the stewarding of the event as excellent and said no problems had been reported from residents, as yet.

“We will review the whole event over the coming days and submit a full report to ILEX, but at this moment it looks like a very positive experience.

“We would wish to thank all those organisations who helped make this such a success and look forward to working with ILEX in the future. We, as a group, were quick to criticise ILEX when nothing was happening, so we have no difficulty praising them now after a good job well done,” said Mr McAuley.

The success of the event will be welcome not just for residents but for ILEX, Derry City Council and the Londonderry Culture Company as well.

Ebrington is set to supersede Guildhall Square next year as Londonderry’s foremost civic playground but local people were anxious traffic, noise and access issues were sorted out before wall-to-wall events take place during the city’s year in the cultural sun.

ILEX is directly responsible for Ebrington although many of the events planned will be run by third party organisations such as the Londonderry Culture Company, which organised Peace One Day.