Royal News Blog

This article is from The Guardian.

This article titled “Kent leads the way in planning celebrations for royal wedding” was written by Robert Booth, for The Guardian on Monday 28th March 2011 22.15 UTC

The cul-de-sacs of Kent are set to be Britain’s hottest street party zone during next month’s royal wedding, but if you want to kick back beneath the bunting steer clear of Middlesbrough, Bradford and Hull.

Not a single person in the three northern towns has applied to close down a street to celebrate the nuptials of Prince William and Kate Middleton, while 54 have done so in Kent, according to a survey of applications for street party licences.

The audit, conducted by Republic, the campaign for an elected head of state, provides a snapshot of local enthusiasm for the wedding on 29 April and reveals that a third of local authorities have had no applications from residents at all.

Declining to deck the streets and raise a cream-tea toast to the future king and queen are the residents of Barrow, Bury and Gosport, while even the residents of the Scilly Isles, many of whom are tenants of the Duchy of Cornwall, have so far spurned the opportunity to take to the streets to celebrate the biggest royal wedding since Charles and Diana in 1981.

There is a distinct north-south divide to Britain’s party plans so far with the five southern councils of Kent, Cambridgeshire, Milton Keynes, South Gloucestershire and Bromley reporting 160 applications between them, while swaths of the north have no applications at all. Of the northern towns, Scarborough in North Yorkshire is most enthusiastic with 18 applications so far while Lincolnshire county council has had 17 bids.

In London, despite David and Samantha Cameron apparently planning a party in Downing Street, many have greeted the prospect of a royal street bash with a collective shrug. The boroughs of Waltham Forest and Sutton are planning 14 parties but no licences have been requested in Haringey and the City of London while there is only one application in Islington and four in Harrow.

The patchy levels of enthusiasm revealed by Republic’s freedom of information requests which they made on 14 March was interpreted by its director, Graham Smith, as “terrible news for the palace press office, who have been desperately trying to whip up enthusiasm for the wedding”.

He added: “They predicted thousands of street parties up and down the country, but the reality is that only a tiny minority of zealous monarchists are interested. Despite the relentless hype the British public just aren’t excited by the wedding or the royals.”

With a couple of weeks still remaining to apply for licences it may be too early to judge and the data only covers 112 councils.

Tracey Murphy, 40, a part-time accounts assistant who is helping to organise a party for up to 150 locals in her cul-de-sac in Dartford, Kent, confirmed their event was “more about pulling the community together than the royal wedding”.

“We are going to do tea and cakes, barbecue, face-painting for the kids, music and there will be a presentation to Norah, our oldest resident at 93,” she said. “We thought that would be nice. We’ve bought bunting and royal wedding flags with William and Catherine’s face on them and little waving flags for the kids. There’s a snooker table, a table tennis table and someone’s gone out and bought a big Jenga.”

Kay McLoughlin, 43, a volunteer events co-ordinator from Folkestone who is helping plan a party for the residents of 30 homes in the Kent town, said she was inspired by her respect for William and was planning to lay on a traditional party. “We thought let’s go for it and it will be a real memory for the children in 20 years’ time.”

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