GuilFest goes into insolvency (again)

GuilFest 2014

Friday 18th to Sunday 20th July 2014
Stoke Park, Guildford, Surrey, England MAP
£120 weekend with camping, child 12-17 £85, u12s free

Daily capacity: 25,000

GuilFest which returned to Guildford, Surrey earlier this year from Friday 18th to Sunday 20th July 2014 has anonunced they will be holding an insolvency meeting after news that some artists, suppliers and those involved in the 2014 festival's infrastructure have not yet been paid more than seven weeks after the event.

GuilFest organiser Tony Scott told GetSurrey (here) today that, "GuilFest has gone into insolvency. The word is that it's now in the hands of the insolvency practitioners. It has happened, at the end of last week."

Mr Scott was given the green light by the local council to apply to bring his festival back this year after the 2012 event when the company behind it went into liquidation following poor ticket sales and bad weather that year, with debts of around £300,000. Mr Scott aded, "We put the plans together and put it into action but the whole process took longer than expected. Back in February we got the go-ahead and decided we could pull off a good festival. The event was absolutely fantastic, the best GuilFest we have ever done. It was a fantastic team that put GuilFest together.

"Unfortunately we didn't get enough ticket sales to pay all the bills we have got to pay. One of the reasons was that we thought we were a bit short of time to do it all in. We have never done a festival in three-and-a-half months."

The short amount of time they had to put the festival together meant that a number of potential big name acts had already been booked by other events, and ticket sales fell a couple of thousand below what organisers had hoped for.

Mr Scott also cited the publicised "awful weather forecast" as a potential reason for the lack of ticket sales. Although the weather was warm and sunny for most of the weekend, he believed that forecasts of thunder and lightning put off a number of festival-goers, in particular campers.

The event was headlined by Boomtown Rats, Kool & the Gang, and The Human League, with a line-up of acts over 9 stages including Naughty Boy, Sam Bailey, Sigma, Fun Lovin’ Criminals, The Enemy, Soulfly, Norman Jay MBE, Friction ft. P Money & Linguistics, Kingsland Road, The Sugarhill Gang, The Farm, Ms. Dynamite, Katrina (Ex Katrina and The Waves) I See Monstas, Doors Alive, The Blackout, Gallows, Space, Sham 69 (original line up), Buzzcocks, Jedward, Boney M, The Fureys, Dreadzone, Slim Chance, Public Service Broadcasting, The Correspondents, The Vibrators, Imperial Leisure, and many more.

Promoters Live Nation hosted a new music festival Magic Summer Live in 2013 over GuilFest's traditional dates at the same site, headlined by Bryan Adams and Jamiroquai.

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