As an 'out of towner' who came to the festival at the weekend and thoroughly enjoyed it I think that the council's policy on parking will kill off the festival more than anything else!

We stayed in a B&B on the front where we could park overnight but had to move to the Pavilion car park before 1000 each morning. This meant that my husband could not 'have a drink' for the weekend as he is the only driver. We had hoped that there would have been parking for the B&B's so that we could have enjoyed a good night's rest and walked along to the Pavilion Fri/Sat and then left from the Pavilion car park on the Sunday. Had we not been to last year's festival and been aware of the reduction in charges for those visiting the Theatre we too, would have been paying £6 per day in parking charges! Parking charges plus accomodation charges together with the 75% increase in the Weekend Season ticket really made it an expensive weekend. Thankfully the line up, the workshops and the friendliness made up for the high costs. Because of the difficulty in parking etc. we were unable to go over to Portland to the Cove Inn to enjoy some of the music there - sorry!!