Letter to the editor, published in the Dorset Evening Echo 01 January 2003. newsdesk@dorsetecho.co.uk

Perhaps they will listen to another festival organiser who is also a councillor?

Folk fans deserve warmer welcome.

I am afraid Tom Grainger, chief executive of Weymouth and Portland Borough Council, is sadly mistaken if he thinks his council's over-zealous enforcement of outdated laws relating to live music venues will not affect the council's own folk festival in 2003.

One of the most important elements of any folk festival is the informal music session in a local pub.

Traditional singers and musicians, along with traditional morris dancers, provide the bedrock support for any such event.

Sadly, it seems that such singers and dance sides are not welcome in Weymouth and Portland, where the council has gained a reputation for ruthlessly enforcing the so-called 'two in a bar ' rule to prevent informal sessions taking place, even when the council has not received a single complaint about the (unamplified) music.

Weymouth and Portland is almost the only council in Britain to be adopting such an attitude.

As a result several hundred folk enthusiasts who would normally have flocked to the Weymouth and Portland Festival may instead boycott the event.

It seems ironic that one council department is spending thousands of pounds of council tax payers money on promoting a festival which another council department is effectively under-mining.

It seems that one side of the council doesn't know or doesn't care what the other side of the council is doing.

As a festival organiser and elected councillor myself in Hampshire, I would be screaming blue murder if my local authority was wasting council taxpayers money in this way.

The council is paying good money to book some first-class acts for the formal festival. Sadly, many of the people who would have enjoyed seeing them will not visit Weymouth and Portland so long as the informal music sessions are banned by the council

Councillor Peter Chegwyn
Gosport
Hampshire

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