Call for more space for Stone Food and Drink Festival

The chairman of Stone Food and Drink Festival has called on Stafford Borough Council to allow them to use more of Westbridge Park after the biggest event in the festival’s 11-year history at the weekend.

Richard Stevens hailed this year’s festival as the “biggest and best yet”. Helped by a wonderful weekend’s weather, and a number of new attractions on Westbridge Park, it’s thought that well over 20,000 people could have visited.

A new site layout this year saw festival organisers making the most of the space they’re allowed to on Westbridge Park – but with big increases in visitors year on year, Richard says it’s vital that the borough council opens up more of the park for the festival. He says the festival team has been asking the borough council for two or three years to allow them to use the football pitch area, a great swathe of green space that would allow the festival to greatly expand, but that the borough has always refused permission.

Richard said: “It is absolutely vital that we get extra space because each year the gate increases and there will come a point when we cannot go any bigger. The queue on Saturday went from the entrance tent, down the drive by the leisure centre and round the corner, and it was like that for two-and-a-half hours. We’ve got to have more space.

“When the marquees are up and the site is packed, like it was for all three days this year, you can’t really see the extra space on Westbridge Park that we’re not allowed to use. Stone Food and Drink Festival generates incredible economic activity for Stone and for wider Staffordshire, not just for the weekend, but the whole week leading up to it. It’s a huge boost to the Staffordshire economy and we need the borough council to get behind us and allow us to use the extra space. The sky’s the limit with what we can do with it.”

A Stafford Borough Council spokesman said today: “We would welcome discussions with Richard and the organisers regarding any plans to expand the Food and Drink Festival and will await him getting in touch with us about this.”

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Here’s our full interview with Richard Stevens…