Coventry City Council to review Godiva festival policies
It's after a stampede at the event on the weekend caused a stage to shut.
Coventry council will review its Godiva festival policies after reports of youths ‘stampeding’ at this year’s event.
Social media was flooded with comments from festival-goers after the incident which caused a festival stage to shut.
Several said they had ‘never seen anything like it”‘ and claimed it involved over a hundred youngsters.
Other attendees complained of groups of teenagers without adults and underage drinking at the popular music festival which is run by the city council.
There were also claims of young people smoking cannabis and vaping at the event held in War Memorial Park from Friday 5 to Sunday 7 July.
Some said the incidents had forced them to leave early and put them off returning.
The alleged behaviour has led to calls for change. One commenter said “something needs to change for next year in regards to dispersing large groups of youths and monitoring who is consuming alcohol.”
Another added: “It’s a family friendly festival that should be safe for everyone…not a place for teenagers to run riot with covered faces fighting making people scared and worried sick for there kids sic.” Others commenting did say they had a good time, describing it as “amazing” and “brilliant.”
But it is not the first time there have been reports of trouble at the festival. Last year, people raised concerns about gangs of youths at the event, a tent crush in 2019 led to 11 people being treated for minor injuries and in 2017 a sixteen year old was arrested for carrying a knife at the festival.
This is despite entrance policies that aim to prevent unaccompanied youths, as under-16s must have an adult aged at least 21 with them to gain entry. Under-18s cannot have vapes at the festival and alcohol, and illegal substances are not allowed to be brought to the site.
A Coventry City Council spokesperson said: “Godiva Festival organisers review all feedback from attendees, including social media comments, and this is used to determine decisions made around future events.
“We worked with a number of partners including our security contractor, West Midlands Police and other organisations who will be part of our robust post-event evaluation. Safety of attendees is the main priority, and the entire site is under observation at all times by the event safety team. We’d like to reassure attendees that Godiva Festival is a safe environment for festivalgoers of all ages.”
Coventry council said: “As a standard part of the event debriefs, including public safety, we look at all our policies and procedures with the wider Godiva Safety team, this will include Admissions. We also seek the advice of the city Events Safety Advisory Group. Our current policy is that U16’s are accompanied by an adult 21+ which was an increase in age from 2023.”
“As above we review all our policies as a matter of course. We operate Challenge 25 at the bars, and we limit bag size to A4 so that searches can be efficiently undertaken. We have clear processes to review and respond to any reports of drug taking on site and underage drinking.
“We operate Festival-wide surveillance with a combination of temporary and permanent CCTV and a staffed event control room. Along with surveillance we have our on-site security and stewarding teams on the ground, who were able to bring a swift conclusion to the issues experienced on Saturday.
“We are determined to ensure the festival is accessible, appealing and safe for everyone. Whilst we apologise to anyone whose experience may have been impacted, we want to reassure our audience that we will continue to work with all our event safety partners to ensure that the small minority don’t spoil the event for the larger majority, as witnessed by the positive feedback from the audience across the Festival weekend.