{"id":634777,"date":"2026-06-12T11:55:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T11:55:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/634777\/"},"modified":"2026-06-12T11:55:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T11:55:09","slug":"music-festival-in-dorset-scrapped-as-organiser-vows-never-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/634777\/","title":{"rendered":"Music festival in Dorset scrapped as organiser vows ‘never again’"},"content":{"rendered":"

The festival began as a free, one-day, community event in 2023, attended by about 8,000 people.<\/p>\n

Polkey previously said its popularity had been unexpected, putting pressure on parking and traffic, so fencing and ticketing was introduced in 2024, along with a park-and-ride.<\/p>\n

About 2,500 people attended in 2025.<\/p>\n

Stir Events sought permission for a three-day festival in 2026 but scaled it back to two days following objections, with 4,500 tickets available each day.<\/p>\n

During the licensing consultation, Highcliffe and Walkford Parish Council was among 22 respondents citing concerns about noise, antisocial behaviour and transport issues, according to the Local Government Reporting Service.<\/a><\/p>\n

But it awarded the event a \u00a310,000 grant in 2025 and \u00a38,500 in 2024, and said it was expecting an application for 2026.<\/p>\n

Polkey said she had not applied, anticipating it would be refused.<\/p>\n

The parish council said the cancellation was “a loss to music lovers”.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson said: “It’s been a fixture here for three years and the parish council has provided significant grant funding to keep it going.<\/p>\n

“This cancellation has come as a great surprise and will be a huge blow to everyone who’s worked so hard on it.”<\/p>\n

Ticket holders are being refunded.<\/p>\n

Headliners Robert Arkins Commitments said they would perform at the Old Fire Station, Bournemouth, instead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The festival began as a free, one-day, community event in 2023, attended by about 8,000 people. Polkey previously…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":634778,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-634777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=634777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634777\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/634778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=634777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=634777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=634777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}