Ampthill festival returns after 2022 cancellation

Pop rockers McFly played at Ampthill Festival in 2021

An independent music festival that was cancelled last summer will take place in Bedfordshire this weekend.

Ampthill festival event kicks off with AmpRocks, headlined by Clean Bandit, Kula Shaker and Black Honey.

The organisers of the volunteer-run event said they "didn't get quite the right line-up" in 2022 and struggled with a spike in production costs.

Organiser Roz Allison said despite a fall in volunteer numbers, "sales have been strong" this year.

She added: "I love doing it - it's very, very hard work and most of us are also doing fulltime paid work. But you do these things for your local community."

Ampthill Festival is run by volunteers

Ampthill Festival started 12 years ago and is run entirely by volunteers as a not-for-profit event.

It was hit by the impact of the pandemic and was postponed in 2020.

After a successful run in 2021, last year's festival was called off in April 2022 and ticket holders were refunded.

Ms Allison said all the costs had shot up: "Staging, artists, even toilets - it all went up massively."

Festival chairman Mark Tiana admitted organisers were "gutted to cancel."

"Being an increasingly rare independent festival, it's always a juggle to balance the books and it just wasn't viable," he said.

Ampthill Festival organisers said most of the people who attend live in the local area

Mr Tiana said this year they have made the site "a more moderate size" to try to balance the books.

Ms Allison's daughter Ellie, 20, is a volunteer and has been helping with preparations for the weekend.

She told the BBC: "The festival takes up a lot of our family's time and I sort of got dragged in, but I love it. It's exhausting, but fun."

Roz Allison and her daughter Ellie helping out at the festival

She is running artist liaison and is looking forward to meeting the VIPs but said people don't always appreciate how much work it takes to put on an event like this.

"Sometimes it's hard to take some of the social media comments from people who think an event like this can be run at a cheaper ticket price and want Taylor Swift or Duran Duran at the same time," she said.

"No-one takes a wage home and it's a pretty good gig for the money."