Fears that a popular youth football festival in Workington has been put in jeopardy have been raised by its organisers.
Workington Juniors have just announced that their annual event, planned for June 8 and June 9 at The Ranch, was unlikely to go ahead.
The club said that this week the Workington Town Council suddenly requested numerous assessments, procedures and management strategies to be completed and subsequently taken to Safety Advisory Groups for confirmation that the event could go ahead.
A club spokesman said: “The short timescale they have given us alongside the sheer amount of expectation that has been placed on us as a small group of volunteers means it is unlikely that this is achievable .
“We have always undertaken our annual festival in line with FA guidelines and in conjunction with Cumberland FA protocol.
“As a voluntary organisation, who pay for use of the land and maintain the land without any expectation for the landowner to do anything, we never anticipated the amount of extra expectations that have just been placed upon us.”
However, Workington Town Council said all it requested was an event management plan, which would include information about health and safety requirements, such as traffic management, emergency service access, available first aid and insurance details.
Emma Chapman, of the council, said: “We are more than happy to work with Workington Juniors, we have to create plans for events we hold on Cumberland Council land.
“We are not trying to stop the event from happening – the whole purpose of buying the land was for events to take place for the community.”
The club spokesman added: “Our festival was initially circulated to the public on January 24 and has featured a number of times on our social media page since.
“As part of our agreement to use the land, the chairman had also detailed the tournament dates a number of months ago so that the town council were aware of all our footballing activities.
“It is therefore deeply disappointing that due diligence has only commenced now, a matter of weeks before the event.
“Having spoken to numerous football clubs in the local area and in the county, no other club has had such significant expectations placed upon them in order to run an event for the benefit of young children.
“To the children of this area we can only apologise. We acknowledge that many local tournaments are not taking place this year and therefore there was a lot of anticipation to take part in the festival.
“We work so hard in the background to do everything we can to engage young children in football, we can only apologise that our attempts to engage with key councillors to this point have not been successful and hope we can make some progress on your behalf soon.
“The committee will be meeting over coming days to make a decision regarding whether we can run the event and will be in touch with all of those who have committed once this has been completed.”
