Phew, all these statements and counter-statements about Glade 2007's licence.

Well, here's a definitive one which has just appeared on Nuskoolbreaks from Functional Biff, one of the Glade organisers and head honcho of Breaksday:

Firstly the newspaper report is inaccurate and has quotes taken from Luke that are out of context.

NO event in the UK is granted a full license to open and for performances to start until the event. At Glastonbury we have been still waiting to get signed off with DJs at the decks ready to go at 12.00 on Friday!

The license for Glade was knocked back on a technicality NOT REFUSED, we are reapplying for the weekend of the 20th 21st 22nd July, the original date for 2007 We moved the festival back a week as it clashed with a lot of European Festivals, it will give us more chance of getting some acts we were unable to book in the past.

The license hearing is set for March there are no reasons why we won’t get a license that were not there before the application had been made. We have objectors and we have supporters from the local community, noise from the site has been a problem and we can show that we have addressed the issues by using the same system as used on last years Origin Stage and changing the format of the stages a little.

This is not an unusual thing to happen with Festivals we had the same at Beautiful Days in year 2 and Glastonbury had many many battles each year to get a license. We are building a small self sufficient town in the middle of the country for 12,000 people and the council have to make it right for the everyone that comes and the locals, that is the process we are going through.
We have been working on lineups and have some pretty cool acts and DJs wanting to play. I would expect Tickets to go on sale at the beginning of April.

and some other news
Glastonbury Festival, Beatz & Bobz will be taking over the G Stage on the Friday with a monster breaks line up as part of the 10th Birthday celebrations.
The old Glade area is going to be quite different this year…..
We have started on the line ups for the main dance tents and the breaks community is going to be very well represented.

And watch out for the second of our Glade spinoff events STIR on April 20th at a legendry London venue…….
Full details and line ups nest week….

Biff
Glade Festival / Glastonbury Dance Village

Note as a side issue that it looks like the 20-22 July date has been vindicated after all. Biff is one of the organisers and jimmy-brayks (owner of NSB) reckons he was officially speaking on behalf of Glade with that statement.

But personally, I'd wait for the official announcement on the Glade website and mailing list if you can hang on that bit longer.

I'm told Neil of efestivals has also spoken to Luke Piper, who said similar things about the article being inaccurate and taking his words out of context.

It was all a bit frustrating to see mass panic yesterday as that article was OLD NEWS to people on this forum. See here, here and here.

The licence difficulties have been known about for a couple of weeks.

To be fair to the Newbury Weekly News, most of the content was true, but it was the headline and the general slant of the article that blew things out of all proportion.

This is what Luke said as long ago as 29 January (I quoted some of this yesterday in the licensing thread)...

"As you may have heard, the hearing, set for 5th February to decide whether the Glade Festival should be given a license this year, has been cancelled. This decision was made by West Berks District Council Environmental Health on the grounds that the application was ‘incomplete’. We have nothing in writing from them but we believe this relates to a technicality concerning the drawings of tents and plan views of the site.

We do feel this is unfair:

1. Those local residents who did take the trouble to write in with their representations both for and against were not concerned about venue drawings as much as noise issues which the organisers have been concentrating on ameliorating.

2. The same format drawings were accepted last year.

3. The application was accepted in December and this decision has been made 6 weeks later after the hearing date had been set. An agenda for the meeting had already been sent out with enclosed documentation.

4. The alleged missing details would not affect public safety since if incorrect the venue would not be able to open to the public on the day.
Fire and event safety teams would need to sign off before the event opens to the public.


We are informed that the licensing committee would require a new application in order to proceed. This would mean a new hearing date in late march or April assuming we applied now.

Measures put in place to reduce potential noise complaints such as surround sound and real-time monitoring require the early booking of specialist equipment and marquees and a safe and well- organised event needs time for proper planning. We would also need to get on with booking bands and acts as July is a very busy time in the events industry. We are well placed in the event industry but time is an important factor.

We have asked the for the original application to be reinstated and a new hearing date set a few weeks later. "

As you can see, the knock-back is a bit of a setback, but not an insurmountable one. And note the bit in bold. There was never any question of them throwing in the towel at this stage, which is what that newspaper's headline wrongly implied.

Well its the same old story as far as these things go I suppose. At least the dates mentioned look like being the ones intended, hopefully it will be sorted soon!

Its all good, every festival goes through the same old crap, we just have to be patient!!! Some times its better not to know what is going on with the licence because it spreads panic!!!!! Not that any of us would panic!!!!!He he he!!!

Just to reiterate about the Glade dates, the organisers said the re-application is going through and it's definitely 20-22 July.