Unfortuanely, the residents by and large don't care about the conveniences for visitors to a festival many local rate payers do not attend.

We are passionate about it because we love the music and we want to listen and play. I guess I would feel kind of the same if Chelmsford BC decided to host a thrash Metal festival in my home patch.   

I know plenty of people living within park and walk vicinity of Hylands have to cope with atrocious behaviour, vandalism and abuse from V Festivalers. They don't complain about the noise. They do complain about people using their front gardens as a toilet and waste bin. Rate payers were also not happy about the fact that Hylands had a serious e choli problem after the last V, which put parts of it off limits to visitors for weeks after, during peak tourist season. How much was spent in clean up. How much did council lose not being able to hire out the rooms at the house during the down time? But they make a big contract with Virgin and money is passing back and forth, so it won't go away.

So I can understand why the Southend Council is reluctant to make provision for a few days a year, especially when they get nothing out of it. If there was some big corporate deal to be made they might be more amenable.

Re Hadleigh. ECC will do whatever it has to to protect its stake in the Games. If someone in power at the council got it into his/her head that the Leigh Festival threatened whatever plans for the build up of Hadleigh, then you can bet some Local Area Agreement would be put in place to stop the festival.

It might be well for festival organisers to look at when the Hadleigh build begins and when the games are actually happening. I would look to working with ECC to provide the cultural side of the games. They are looking hard at how to tie in Essex cultural activities to the games. I know. I minute the meetings between Leisure/Tourism and Arts/Heritage. We are building links with Sport and Legacy 2012. There may even be some funding for Leigh Festival in the run up to and during the Games.

On the positive side, if the Hadleigh build up is perhaps a micro Olympic village (for athletes and entourage) and some hotels and increased bus service between Hadleigh and Leigh, these could be good for future festivals.