Another promoter wants to turn the Great Lines into a major music venue

Another promoter wants to turn the Great Lines into a major music venue

Once again, someone is trying to turn the Great Lines into a music festival site.

A company called Stradivarius Group has applied for a premises licence to hold outdoor events at the Great Lines Heritage Park, with crowds of up to 20,000 people. The application is for up to six event days each year.

It is unclear at the moment exactly what type of events they want to put on there.

Stradivarius Group won't be a name familiar to most people in Medway, but another company it now controls probably will be. Since March, it has controlled The Festival Crowd, the promoter behind Rochester Castle Live.

The Festival Crowd arrived in Medway in 2024, taking over the Rochester Castle concerts from previous promoter AGMP and replacing the old run of individual evening shows with a series of one-day events. This year, Rochester Castle Live featured headline performances from the Libertines, McFly, and Ministry of Sound Classical.

Things haven't always gone smoothly. Last summer we reported that tickets for its Symphonic Ibiza event were appearing on seat-filler websites for £15 while still being sold locally for £35. But whatever else can be said about The Festival Crowd, they have actually managed to put on several years of large outdoor events in Medway.

That gives this proposal for the Great Lines something its predecessors largely lacked.

This is now the third serious attempt in four years to establish a major music event on the Great Lines. So far, none have produced anything.

The site's appeal is obvious. The Great Lines is enormous, central and capable of holding crowds on a scale that most places in Medway simply couldn't. It is also surrounded by homes and sits between Chatham, Gillingham, and Brompton, creating a rather more challenging question of how tens of thousands of people are supposed to arrive, leave, park, and generally exist without causing chaos.

Previous promoters have encountered that challenge rather quickly.

Back in 2022, Stardust Festival announced the Great Lines Music Weekend for the following May bank holiday. They proposed a four-day programme that was nothing if not eclectic. One night would feature Katherine Jenkins and a classical concert, while another would become Dream Valley, a dance festival for up to 25,000 people.

Kent Police raised serious concerns about the plans, particularly around the Dream Valley event. Councillors questioned traffic, road closures and public safety implications. In February 2023, Medway Council's licensing panel formally refused the application.

As we reported at the time, this did not appear to deter the organisers. Tickets continued to be sold while the promoters insisted they would appeal.

The 2023 events were eventually abandoned. Dream Valley moved to Upminster, while the rest of the proposed events disappeared. When we reported on the collapse, the organisers blamed rail engineering works and announced that they had secured a multi-year licence from 2024.

This was broadly true, even if few were entirely convinced at the time.

After appealing the original refusal, Stardust agreed to a reduced premises licence allowing one event weekend each year until September 2027. The resulting licence initially allowed music and alcohol activities across three days.

Before they could actually use it though, the business behind Dream Valley was acquired by another promoter, Festivals Master. So once again, another attempt at a Great Lines festival was born.

This time, there were reasons to think it could actually happen. Festivals Master was part of the group behind Manchester's Victoria Warehouse and had experience of running large-scale events elsewhere. Its plans were more developed, including proposals for community involvement and free tickets for local residents.

Our headline cautiously declared that the Great Lines might get its music festival after all.

It did not.

The project was still moving through the licensing process in early 2024. By then, DV Master, another company within the Festivals Master stable, held the existing licence and applied to extend the event from three days to four. Objections from Kent Police and a resident prompted a licensing hearing, but both were withdrawn, and the hearing was cancelled.

Then the whole thing seemed to disappear.

The new application appears to be separate from those earlier schemes.

There is also a question about what this might mean for Rochester Castle Live. The Festival Crowd has spent the past three years running events at the castle, while the Great Lines offers vastly more space and potential for much larger audiences.

Nothing in the application suggests Rochester Castle Live will change, but it does mean an established promoter is now looking at a second, considerably larger outdoor venue.

But the Great Lines is once again back to a position it has occupied regularly in recent years, with a sizeable music festival proposal on the table but no actual firm plans in place for what might actually happen.

Given the new applicants have actually proved they can put on events and bring in crowds in Medway, we might actually be closer to something happening after all.

Another changing of the guard for Medway Conservatives

Five Conservative councillors have confirmed they will stand down at next May's local elections, removing several long-serving figures from a group already reshaped since losing control of Medway Council in 2023.

Adrian Gulvin, Howard Doe, Barry Kemp, Matt Fearn, and Alex Hyne will all leave the council, accounting for nearly a third of the Conservatives' current group of 17.

The announcement comes only two weeks after Andrew Lawrence quit the party to sit as an independent while launching his own Medway-focused party.

It is not a full changing of the guard. Other long-serving Conservative councillors, including David Brake, Gary Etheridge, and David Wildey, are believed to be staying on, while group leader George Perfect has spent much of the past two years trying to present the party as a newer generation preparing to win back control.

Even so, some fairly significant Medway political careers are now approaching their end.

Howard Doe has been a fixture of local Conservative politics for decades, serving on the old Gillingham Borough Council before moving onto Medway Council and eventually becoming Deputy Leader.

Doe was one of the most senior figures in the Conservative administration that ran Medway for two decades, with particular influence over housing and regeneration. Former leader Alan Jarrett once described him to Local Authority as having a "superb intellect."

Barry Kemp's retirement is rather less surprising. When we interviewed him in 2024, he described this term in office as "probably my last stint."

He was first elected to Medway Council in 2007, later served two years as Mayor, and was long one of the group's more dependable figures as whip and scrutiny chair, as well as occasionally playing the organ at special council meetings.

Matt Fearn is leaving after a long, interrupted spell in local government. He first represented Rainham Central between 2003 and 2007, before returning in 2015 for Cuxton and Halling, and now represents the expanded Cuxton, Halling and Riverside ward.

His departure is interesting because that ward has already become much less comfortable for the Conservatives. The party won both seats there in 2023, but Phil Filmer only narrowly held the second seat before his death earlier this year. Reform then won the subsequent by-election, leaving Fearn as the ward's remaining Conservative councillor.

Adrian Gulvin's departure has been expected for some time. He served on Rochester-upon-Medway City Council in the 1980s and 1990s before returning to local politics in 2011 and eventually becoming one of the most senior members of the Conservative administration.

Gulvin served as Cabinet Member for Resources before the party lost power in 2023, then briefly became Leader of the Opposition. When we interviewed him after the election, he made it clear that he saw himself as an interim figure while the group worked out what came next.

That next arrived in 2024, when George Perfect replaced him as leader.

The final retirement is different.

Alex Hyne was only elected in 2023, comfortably winning one of the two Princes Park seats alongside Robbie Lammas. He will therefore leave after a single four-year term.

Taken together, the departures continue the steady turnover inside the Medway Conservatives that began before the 2023 election, when long-established figures like Alan Jarrett and Rodney Chambers also left the council.

The party now heads towards 2027 in an odd position. Some of the people most closely associated with its years running Medway are leaving, some are staying, and one councillor has already walked out to build a rival local party.

For George Perfect, the challenge is no longer just to persuade voters that the Conservatives have changed since 2023.

By next May, a significant part of the group genuinely will have.

Footnotes

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