"Intolerable level of risk": Safety fears raised before Yorkshire Dales Food and Drink Festival cancellation

The festival had been due to take place at Aireville Park in Skipton between July 18 and 20.

Festival organisers had been due to have a crunch meeting about health and safety issues with North Yorkshire Council next week. An event spokesperson said the festival’s cancellation “has nothing to do with this report or any issues with health and safety”.

Prior to Friday’s cancellation announcement, organisers said they “do not recognise” the concerns outlined in the leaked report, written by a safety consultant “no longer associated” with the event. They said "robust" plans were in place.

The cancellation followed several acts, including celebrity chefs James Martin and Rosemary Shrager, withdrawing from the bill in recent days. Another chef Galton Blackiston and disco act Brutus Gold’s Love Train also withdrew, with the latter citing “non-payment” issues – a claim denied by the organisers.

The event was due to return this year under the new ownership of Cocker Hoop Creative after the previous company which ran the event went into liquidation last year.

The leaked seven-page report was dated June 18 and written by an event safety professional called Graham Smith. It alleged: “Significant gaps exist in health-and-safety management, licensing compliance, crowd welfare, traffic control and consumer protection.”

The report stated that at the time of writing alleged issues included there being no traffic management plan for the event or fire-risk assessment for the campsite, as well as no wet weather plan or drainage strategy. It said showers for the campsite had yet to be booked and permission was yet to be granted for three of the event’s planned car parks.

The report recommended a series of “corrective actions” and concluded: “This is not a call to cancel the event. However, as it stands, this event is not currently safe or legally compliant, and rectifying these issues is not optional – it is an obligation under UK law.” Mr Smith did not wish to comment.

Before the event was called off, North Yorkshire Council’s corporate director of environment Karl Battersby said the authority was meeting with organisers next week “when we will be asking for how they plan to resolve issues that have been raised in the report”. He added: “We will only allow an event to go ahead if we are satisfied that it is safe for the public, which is of paramount importance.”

Prior to the cancellation, Jon Arrowsmith, managing director of Cocker Hoop Creative, said his firm’s top priority “is always to ensure the highest standards of health and safety”. He said they had a “comprehensive” event management plan including “detailed strategies covering traffic management, crowd welfare, health and safety procedures, and licensing”, with “robust planning and safety measures” in place.

After the event was called off, a spokesperson said the festival stood by that position and organisers had been in the process of “working through the questions raised” by the report for next week’s meeting with a council-led Safety Advisory Group.

Mr Arrowsmith said of the cancellation: “We have worked tirelessly over the last year to stage a festival that Yorkshire could be proud of, but there were too many challenges that we did not foresee at the start of this journey and too little time to fix them. I’m completely heartbroken and desperately sorry for letting everyone down.”