Festival aroused local opposition

4:48pm Tuesday 19th August 2008

I LINK the Ledbury Reporter headline article in last week’s issue on the cancellation of the Much Marcle Bank Holiday gig to Kate Chester-Lamb’s letter in the same issue who wrote of her disturbance by The Big Chill four miles away on the other side of the Malvern Hills. Consider then our situation in Much Marcle where a planned music festival was scheduled for three or four days over this August Bank holiday attracting up to 5,000 people right on the edge of this small rural community.

Local press headlines last week inferred the licence refusal was an injustice to the promoters, organisers and all the fans that had paid in advance but one has to wonder what sort of promoter would book artists and sell tickets before sounding out the community and obtaining the licence required by law to stage the event?

That only a few people in the locality were aware of the event was a direct result of the way the promoters went about organising it. By trying to foist it on the village in what seems to have been an underhand way they ultimately sowed the seeds of their own downfall. A village meeting called as late as August 5 gave rise to considerable local opposition and the premises licence subsequently failed on legal grounds arising from the inadequate level of advance publicity.

It is a fact that the true feeling in the parish towards this event is unknown and objectors may well be a minority. Some people are undoubtedly in favour of it and there will almost certainly be another application. In that event everyone in the village needs to know well in advance of its intended scale and duration and be given the opportunity to express an opinion and any licence granted only after all the many concerns already expressed are properly addressed.

R YORKE, Monks Meadow, Much Marcle.

Editors Choice