Bristol dance festival cancelled due to residents calling it “a form of torture”

A dance festival has been cancelled after two years due to complaints from local residents.

The organisers of Goa Cream Festival had planned to hold the festival at Yewtree Farm near Thornbury, north of Bristol, for the third year in a row and the festival’s ninth year overall.

However, South Gloucestershire councillors refused the plans for the psychedelic trance festival to run from September 12 to 14 after speaking to the council’s environmental health team and Avon and Somerset Police.

One local resident who complained to police last year wrote in a letter that the “non-stop heavy bass music” was “almost inhumane and a form of torture,” as reported by BBC News.

Meanwhile, environmental health officer Florence Fisher told the council meeting that the festival last year prompted 11 complaints from nearby residents and that the environmental health team was only given “numbers scribbled on pieces of paper” and poor screenshots of the equipment’s readings.

One resident claimed that the festival gave them a headache all weekend, while others said that the music made their windows and houses shake. Police licensing officer Wes Hussey shared a complaint from another resident who said the noise had a “profound effect” on him and his family, and he mentioned that the suggested music and alcohol sales times could result in confrontation.

At the meeting, organiser Piers Ciappara said that the festival did its own noise monitoring last year but had since contracted a professional sound acoustic engineer, adding: “He said: “Last year we only had handwritten notes and photographs because the week after the event my colleague who had the sound system had a bad accident. He nearly chopped his hand off cutting the grass so he couldn’t put a spreadsheet together – but this year we have a professional team with us.”

He said that the festival attracts an audience aged over 40 on average, with a lot of festivalgoers bringing their children, and that the festival raises money for Bristol Suicide Prevention and Sharpness Lifeboat Station.

He suggested changing the orientation of the speakers so that they point away from homes to tackle noise concerns, as well as reducing alcohol sales times.