Organisers postpone the Great British Food Festival in Leeds

With the nation's current rules around social distancing, bosses say they had no choice but to push back the dates of the popular festivals, which are held at UK stately homes and public parks and attract over 100,000 each year.

The festival at Harewood House was due to be held on May 23-25 but will now be held October 3-4.

Elsewhere in Yorkshire, a festival was also due to be held at Hardwick Hall in Chesterfield on May 8-10 but is now due to take place September 18-20.

Event manager Daniel Maycock said despite not being able to showcase British eateries through the festivals this summer, they still hope to highlight artisan produce which is available to buy online during the coronavirus crisis.

He said: "Obviously with the current recommendations around social distancing the events couldn’t go ahead.

"We hope to be ready to go later in the year, in the meantime we are working on a ‘Great British Market Place’ platform on our website – www.greatbritishfoodfestival.com.

"The idea is that we will have lots of our fantastic, artisan food and drink producers on there, lots doing delivery.

"t’s free for food and drink producers to use, so we encourage any to join up on our website if they want to be included."

He continued: "Many of our traders are small businesses and for whom the next few months will be really tough, so if people can, if would be great for them to click on and buy some quality, Great British made artisan produce – at the very least it beats queuing at Tesco."

The Great British Food Festival bosses are also pointing people to their social media channels, where they will be replicating some of the elements from the food festivals, such as a ‘Cake Off’ and kids’ cookery recipes.