Hampton Court Palace Flower Show
The first Hampton Court Palace Flower Show (HCPFS) was held in 1993, and it has gone on to become the world’s largest flower show.
It is held in early July, and is run by the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS). Erected on the north and south sides of the Long Water in Hampton Court Park, it features show gardens, floral marquees and pavilions, talks and demonstrations. The flower show also focusses on environmental issues, cookery, and growing your own food and vegetables, whilst also offering visitors the opportunity to buy gardening accessories, plants and flowers.
Service summary
We have been providing external traffic management at the Hampton Court Palace Flower Show since 2009.
With over 120,000 visitors throughout its 5-day duration, it is imperative that visitors arrive and depart in a safe and efficient manner, whilst minimising disruption to the local area. To facilitate this, we start planning the operation in advance, attending Safety Advisor Group meetings with all relevant stakeholders.
Visitor arrival is staggered, so our predominant role for the ingress phase is to manage the busy pedestrian crossings with our CSAS-accredited operatives. Visitor departure coincides with rush hour traffic, so our focus for the egress phase is vehicle management, stopping thoroughfare traffic in order to allow exiting vehicles to join the road network.
The transport operation is centrally co-ordinated from the Event Control Room. We work closely with the local authorities and internal traffic management provider, sharing information throughout the day with our respective operational management leads and disseminating to our teams to ensure a safe and efficient operation.
Hampton Court Palace also hosts other events throughout the year. We provide an innovative online car park booking system, which offers event organisers a better understanding of attendance figures, generating revenue through pre-sales.
