Galtres Parklands Festival to continue in 2015

Galtres Parklands Festival 2014

Friday 22nd to Sunday 24th August 2014
Duncombe Park, Helmsley, York, North Yorkshire, YO62 5EB, England MAP
£95, child (5-15) £40 family (2a + 3c) £285

Daily capacity: 10,000

The Galtres Festival Charitable Foundation, which owns the annual Galtres Parklands Festival event held at Duncombe Park, Helmsley, has confirmed that the future of the festival is safe and it will happen again next year.

This reassurance has been issued on the festival's website (here) following news that a subsidiary operating company, Galtres Festival Trading Ltd, ceased trading yesterday owing thousands of pounds to stallholders who have still not been paid three weeks after this year's event finished.

A statement by event organiser James Houston says, "Plans for a 2015 festival over the August bank holiday weekend are well-underway. It will be difficult to upstage this year’s event, which received rave reviews, but we’re going to try our best. We expect to be announcing the first of our headliners before Christmas."

Foundation Trustee Jane Johnson is quoted as adding, "It’s been tough going in recent years to make this event pay for itself. Successive years of bad weather haven’t helped. We’ve decided that the best thing for the future is to start anew, safeguarding revenues and focusing on improving the business model.

"We believe that the event potentially has a highly profitable future, provided a check is kept on costs, and sales continue to grow. The festival’s popularity is at an all-time high, and if we can capitalise on that popularity the event will have a bright and prosperous future.

"This restructuring is not in any way a means of not paying people. On the contrary it’s our firm intention to pay all suppliers in full at the earliest opportunity. It’s about safeguarding revenues. Our event has a hugely positive economic impact on the region, and we are determined to see that continue."

In an article on The Northern Echo website, (here), it reveals that traders say that the cashless system operated by the festival company, with festival goers putting funds on a G-Card which was used to buy food, drinks and goods on site, meant that each trader was given a statement at the end of the festival saying how much they were owed, many of them have not received the money, and that up to 50 businesses could be affected.

The article also reveals that some of the unpaid traders who provided food and drinks at the event now face going out of business.

Galtres Parklands G Card

Galtres was the first UK independent festival to go 100% cashless with a RFID payment system last year, and eFestivals was critical of the G-Card in our review of this year's event (here).