Council says sorry for festival fiasco that left fans out of pocket

The festival was called off a month before the company organising it went bust

A council has apologised to music fans who lost their money when the company organising a festival went bust.

Torbay Council gave promoters Case Live a £20,000 advance despite the company never having organised an event on such a scale before, councillors heard.

The English Riviera Food and Music Festival should have brought UB40 and a host of bands and celebrity chefs to Torre Abbey Meadows in May.

But it was called off about a month before Case Live went into liquidation.

Councillor Cordelia Law told Torbay’s Overview and Scrutiny Board: “People spent their money on tickets because they trusted us.

"Now it’s as if we have been made complicit in them losing huge amounts of money.”

The festival was advertised as "the biggest party of the summer".

Councillors discussed an auditors’ report on the festival collapse which called for tighter controls and procedures, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

Deputy council leader Chris Lewis told the meeting: “We need to give a big apology from Torbay Council to those people who did buy tickets.

"It can’t have been easy for them to lose the money when they thought that with the backing of Torbay Council it was safe for them to do so.

"We have got to learn from the mistakes that happened.”