Festival teams ready for more rain

So far, the Great Yorkshire Show and M-Fest music festival at Harewood House have been probably the most significant casualties.

Now, with the Met Office predicting unsettled weather for the rest of this month and into August, organisers of future events are busy drafting contingency plans to avoid similar decisions.

The team behind music festival Beacons is particularly well-prepared after it had to be cancelled in its first year – by flooding on the site near Skipton last August.

Director John Drysdale said: “All in all, lessons have been learned from last year and we have put in a pretty robust to deal with worst-case conditions. There’s not a lot you can do about the weather but its impact needs to be addressed.”

The event, while still at Heslaker Farm, has been moved to different fields. Site visits were carried out when the weather was at its worst recently to ensure that the area would be safe.

“Even though it’s just a stone’s throw away on the other side of the embankment it’s also much higher, better drained and has much better access,” he said.

“Last year really we lost the car parking and camping areas. The actual event site was set up on relatively safe ground and at no point was it really affected.

“This year all areas are massively higher and on much safer ground.”

Two miles of roadway have been put in this year to give better access all the way around the site.

All the festival’s stages are also under cover and floors will be laid inside some of the tents.

“We have got lots of contingencies for any eventualities,” said Mr Drysdale.

“We’re a year ahead on other events because we were hit with a worst-case scenario last year.”

However, the weather does not appear to have put off festival-goers. Ticket sales so far indicate it will sell out well before the opening day on August 17.

This comes as a relief to Mr Drysdale and his fellow directors, who were forced to sell off assets to refinance the event after last year’s “significant” loss.

“It was a very, very hard lesson, one that we’ve lost so much from but one that has strengthened us as a team and strangely there are a lot of positives that have come out of it,” he said.

“It’s typically British, that when your back’s against the wall you end up fighting. There has been such a determination from everybody to lift the bar and produce something really special.”

It is not yet clear what provisions Leeds Festival organisers Festival Republic will have in place at Bramham Park over the bank holiday weekend.

However, managing director Melvin Benn had tractors, trackways and temporary fencing on standby for Latitude festival in Suffolk over the weekend.

Organisers of Bingley Music Live are also keeping a close eye on the weather ahead of that festival, due to take place from August 31 until September 2.

Bingley Show, which had been due to take place on Saturday on the same Myrtle Park site, had to be called off because it was waterlogged.

A council spokesman said it was too early to speculate about whether Bingley Music Live would be affected.

“We design our event with wet weather contingency built into our planning so that production vehicles can gain access to virtually all areas via portable roadway,” he said.

“However, if the site is that saturated and it is deemed a health and safety hazard for public admittance or that public admittance would result in significant irreparable damage to the site then cancellation would obviously be a consideration.”