Beer festival to go ahead despite police concerns

A beer festival will go ahead despite concerns from the police and council bosses over noise and safety.

Seaton Carew Beer Festival will host live music and food vendors on 1 June at Hornby Park.

Cleveland Police said it had worries around security, safety, and the steps being taken to prevent crime.

The organiser said measures would be in place to ensure the event ran safely and said it had held events in the past without issue.

The beer festival will run from 12:30 BST to 22:00.

There will be performances from four musical acts throughout the day, while children's inflatables will also be on site.

But at a meeting on Tuesday, Hartlepool Borough Council's environment health manager said there was a "fundamental failure" to show how noise would be managed in the application for the event.

Monica Vaughan, director of Hornby Park, said the event would be ticketed and noise checks would be carried out by security staff, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

She added: "Whilst we haven’t run a beer festival before, we have safely run, for over 20 years, several fun days on our site with up to 1,000 people and we have never had any trouble or issues during these events."

Ms Vaughan admitted the organisers had been "naive" in how they filled out their temporary event application as they had never submitted one before.

She said they would work with an independent safety advisor to create a plan for the event and carry out a risk assessment.

Councillors approved the application after being "reassured" over the steps the organiser said it would take.

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