Lytham Festival organisers an application to increase its daily capacity to 25,000 people per day from 2024.
Cuffe & Taylor have submitted the proposal to Fylde Council’s licensing team, following the major success of this year’s event, which created £16.8million of incremental income for UK businesses this summer, equating to a gross added value of £9.2million.
The 2023 festival welcomed 92,000 visitors over five days with headline sets from Jamiroquai, George Ezra, Sting, Lionel Richie and Def Leppard and Mötley Crüe.
The new application follows the approval of an increase to 22,500 for two days of the 2023 Lytham Festival after a meeting of the council’s licensing panel to determine the matter, and the publication of an independent report that found the subsequent larger festival provided a significant boost to local businesses and was viewed positively by residents.
The plans, submitted yesterday, will be open for 28 days to give residents and business owners opportunity to make representation for or against the proposals with specific reference to the licensing objectives until Thursday 16 November.
Representations can be made in writing digitally, through the post, or by hand delivery up to the final date.
Cllr Chris Dixon of Fylde Council said: “The views and welfare of Fylde residents and business owners are paramount to decisions on these applications. It was after careful deliberation, and a meeting of the Licensing Panel with many representatives from the local community and other stakeholders, that the increase to 22,500 festivalgoers was approved for two days of the 2023 festival.
“We were pleased to facilitate and promote the new Lytham Festival Residents Forum, providing local people the opportunity to discuss their thoughts on the festival with the organisers directly, and I would anticipate the same degree of thoughtful consideration with regards to this new application. Representations can be made in writing either in favour or against in relation to the licensing objectives, and it is absolutely vital that anyone interested in the matter makes their views known on the application.”
The 2024 festival will be hosted on Lytham Green, as it has been every year since 2010, barring cancellations due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021.
When making a representation, names, address and contact details will be shared with the applicant. Street names and postcodes will be published in the licensing hearing agenda, which will be publicly available online prior to the hearing.
Image credit: Gill Potts
