The Notting Hill Carnival now costs London taxpayers around £20m a year, according to a former advisor to ex-Mayor of London Boris Johnson.
James Ford, writing in an opinion piece, argues that while the event may seem like a free day out, it is far from it. He takes issue with the economics of the carnival, specifically the value London taxpayers get from it versus the subsidy they must provide each year.
Rising Costs and Subsidies
The Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea forks out around £1m to clean up the streets after the event. Policing costs in 2024 were more than £13.5m, up from £11.8m in 2023.
However, the grant from City Hall has seen the greatest increase under the current mayor. In 2016, the first year of Sadiq Khan's mayoralty, the Greater London Authority (GLA) chipped in just £340,000. This year, the GLA's contribution was £5.6m, a more than 16-fold increase in a decade.
Economic Benefit vs Taxpayer Burden
Defenders of the carnival cite a 2024 study by an economist at JN Bank, which found the event generates around £396m of economic benefit. That implies that for every pound of taxpayer subsidy, the carnival generates nearly £20 of income for the London economy.
Ford is sceptical of this total, noting it would mean the carnival has more than double the economic impact of Glastonbury Festival (£168m) and 10 times the value of the Wireless Festival (£30m). The £396m total would also translate into each of the 2m attendees spending an average of £198.
Even if the total is accepted, Ford argues that all of that supposed economic benefit disappears into the pockets of traders, food vendors, hoteliers and landlords, leaving London taxpayers shortchanged. A majority of Londoners who do not attend carnival are picking up the tab for the minority who do, not to mention the estimated 160,000 non-Londoners who attend each year.
Cost-Saving Suggestions
Ford proposes several cost-saving measures. He suggests the organisers ought to pay for, or at least contribute to, their own policing bill, as football clubs do for policing inside their stadiums. He suggests charging each of the 2m attendees £10 to cover policing costs.
He also notes that more than one third of policing costs (£5.5m in 2023) is caused by overtime payments because the carnival takes place over a bank holiday weekend. Moving the event a week earlier or later could yield significant savings.
To avoid the GLA having to fork out £5.6m a year, Ford suggests organisers could find cash from more competitive sponsorship deals. The event already has corporate sponsorship from brands like Puma, Bacardi, Red Bull, Grace Foods and Adidas, but organisers have never disclosed how much they make from sponsorship.
Ford concludes that he does not want to cancel the carnival, just stop it being a giant black hole for taxpayers' cash. He asks if London can't turn a reasonable profit or at least cover its costs on one of the biggest street festivals in the world, then there is something fundamentally wrong.
