A MUSIC festival planned for Great Yarmouth this weekend has been called off after borough council officers refused to give permission for it to go ahead.

A MUSIC festival planned for Great Yarmouth this weekend has been called off after borough council officers refused to give permission for it to go ahead.

The St Nick's Music Festival was due to take place at St Nicholas Recreation Ground tomorrow and Sunday and the organisers had already advertised the bands that were due to play, which included tribute acts to AC-DC and the Prodigy.

But the council, which owns the site, has not received an adequate health and safety risk assessment from the organisers and decided to shut down the festival yesterday fearing it could be liable for any incident which happened.

Simon Mutten, the council's environmental strategy manager, said the health and safety assessment submitted by the organisers was inadequate and lacked information on first aid, how it was going to be supervised and managed and the communication structure on the night.

He said there were risks involved with holding an event that was expected to attract between 1,000 and 1,500 people in a small venue, especially as there was going to be a licensed bar.

“With the size and scale of the event being proposed, normally we would be in receipt of a health and safety risk assessment weeks in advance, but we were simply not given that information in advance.”

Mr Mutten added the decision to close the festival had to be taken to give people enough notice it would not be taking place.

“If we were not satisfied and allowed the event to go ahead then the council would have a liability as well, The health and safety of everybody using our facilities is paramount,” he said.

The festival, a fundraiser for the annual Town Centre Music Festival (TCMF), would have featured the AC-DC and Prodigy tributes High Voltage and Jilted Generation as well as a funfair, bouncy castles, a variety of stalls, fast food and a bar.

Organiser Chris Anson said he had been given licensing permission to hold the event between 11am and 11pm, but council officers backtracked earlier this week and only granted permission up to 9pm.

But Mr Mutten said the organisers needed both licensing permission and an agreement from the landlord, in this case the borough council, before the event could go ahead.

Mr Anson said: “My personal opinion is that this is an event for the town. It is to raise money for the TCMF. The council, instead of putting this off, should be trying to find ways of putting it on.

“If they cared about the people of the town then they would let this event go ahead.”