Slam Dunk festival apology after queue and traffic complaints

Thousands of people attended Slam Dunk at Temple Newsam Park in Leeds, which drew complaints over car parking and long waits for food and toilet facilities

A music festival in Leeds has apologised after attendees complained of long queues and traffic problems.

Revellers took to social media after Sunday's Slam Dunk festival to share negative experiences of gridlock while entering the car park and insufficient food vendors at the sold-out event.

Those at Temple Newsam Park also reported "overcrowding" and long waits to use toilet facilities.

"We are committed to improving the event," the organisers said.

Visitors said they had paid almost £100 for a ticket to see bands, but missed performers' sets due to being stuck waiting for food.

Posting on Twitter, Erin Jones said she "queued for 3.5 hours to get into car park and still didn't reach the entrance".

Slam Dunk saw performances from bands including The Offspring, Bowling for Soup, Enter Shikari and Gogol Bordello (pictured)

Responding to a post by the Slam Dunk festival team, Beth Soulsby said: "The bands were great but this was my tenth year of attending slam dunk and it was the worst organised one yet.

"I missed many bands waiting for toilets / food, I was doubled over in pain at one point during an hour-long wait for the toilets."

Slam Dunk, which focuses on pop-punk, emo, metal and alternative music, saw performances from bands including The Offspring, Bowling for Soup and Enter Shikari.

Kaleigh Watterson, a BBC North West reporter who attended the event, said "queues were a large part of the day".

"Because of traffic issues, we hopped out of the taxi about 20 minutes away from the festival site and walked to reach it," she said.

"The biggest problem was the food queues - they snaked across part of the festival site for the various food vendors."

"I couldn't fault the performances of any of the bands I watched, but the sheer amount of people on site queuing throughout the day did detract from the experience."

In a lengthy statement, the festival posted: "We recognise there were problems and that some customers did not have an experience to the standard which they expected.

"We would like to apologise for the issues which occurred and reassure our customers that we are committed to improving the event."

Organisers said the event was not oversold, with an "unprecedented" number of cars arriving at the site without a pre-booked parking space causing a "traffic flow issue".

"We were assured that we had an adequate number of food vendors for the expected number of attendees, however, we recognise that this wasn't the case," it said.

The festival said it would look to increase the number of traders at future events, along with toilets and water points.

"We would like to reassure customers that these facilities are in line with industry recommendations and have been increased from previous years," the statement added.