Glastonbury festival’s organisers have been asked to take measures to improve crowd control at future editions of the event.
In Mendip District Council’s annual report published in the wake of this year’s edition of the festival, organisers were also asked to look into how noise can be reduced in the coming years after local residents identified "excessive loudness and low frequency" as another problem during this year’s event.
The council oversees the issuing of the license that allows the festival to go ahead at its iconic home of Worthy Farm, and did concede that this year’s event was "well-planned and managed" overall. Going into detail about potential areas that organisers can do better though, the council report mentioned "improvements to crowd distribution across the site," in order to prevent crushes and injuries. It also requested that more effort is made to control the set-up of camping in the staff and performer areas to reduce fire risk and prevent "conflict between vehicles and tents."
On the matter of crowd control, Councillor Chris Inchley, who chaired the council meeting on this year’s festival that led to the report, said: "This year I had constituents contact me about the noise of the festival – even the local MP did the same. Talking to people who actually went to the festival, one comment made by many people was about the actual number of people on the site, especially on the Sunday. They said they felt rather unsafe with the volume of people."
Emily Eavis – who recently issued a statement about the price increase for tickets to next year’s edition of the event – and her fellow team of festival organisers are expected to respond to the report and its suggestions in the coming months.
Next year’s Glastonbury festival will take place June 21 to 25. Tickets sold out in around an hour when they went on sale early last month. The lineup is expected to be revealed early next year.
