More about: Y Not Festival

Y Not Festival have defended criticms made by festival guests that supposed they were under prepared for the bad weather conditions.

One of those critical was Jimi, a music fan who spoke to Gigwise from the festival the morning after it was cancelled. In the same conversation he had here with us, he spoke of a lack of ground management compared to Glastonbury or Leeds festival and said he felt like "they just tried to blag it."

Another festivalgoer named Maddie told the BBC "We ended up going home on Friday night because we just felt it was badly organised. I think they needed to be more prepared for the mud. It is Derbyshire." 

Oli echoed the above concerns and told Gigwise about the muddy car parks: "I feel that due to the bad weather forecast perhaps they could have put flooring down.”

We asked Y Not festival about these opinions that there was a lack of preparedness. A spoksperson made the below statement via email:

"We were extremely well prepared for the festival this year. We increased spend by 30% on last year’s event and invested heavily in infrastructure including trackway, traffic management, on-site staff, water, toilets, washing facilities and we had an enhanced police presence.

“Unfortunately due to the extreme weather conditions throughout the weekend we took the difficult decision to cancel the festival on Sunday morning. We share our guests’ frustration and disappointment but ultimately the safety of our guests, performers, and crew was our primary concern and the potential risk was too severe for the event to carry on.”

Meanwhile, calls for refunds are growing on Twitter. A statement sent to the Derby Telegraph said: "We will be providing all guests with further information about this in the coming days."

It concluded: "Ending Y Not 2017 like this was an incredibly difficult decision and we are as disappointed as you are. Getting guests off site safely is our number one priority. Please bear with us and, if you do need to contact us, please be advised that our response may be a little delayed at this time."

It is regrettable to see a festival with the best of intentions have to deal with such awful conditions and we would like to commend those putting in their best efforts to ease the situation, like these two heroes:

More about: Y Not Festival