Strawberries and Creem Festival to be replaced by family-friendly and classical concerts at Childerley Orchard

New classical concerts and family friendly events could be coming to Cambridge to replace the Strawberries and Creem Festival.

Event organisers said they are hoping to put on a new range of events now that the decision has been made not to bring the festival back to Cambridge.

South Cambridgeshire District Council has granted a new licence to provide more flexibility for organisers hosting events at Childerley Orchard.

Under the new licence, events will now be able to be held on weekdays, instead of just at weekends.

However, the licence still only allows for events to be held for up to eight days a year between May 1 and September 30, and a day break is required after a four-day event.

Harry Feigen, managing director of Proud Events, the production agency which has been running the events at the farm for the last three years, applied for the new licence on behalf of S&C Productions.

He told councillors at a licensing sub-committee on December 14 that a new licence would allow them to be more flexible.

Mr Feigen said: “We already hold a premises licence for two festivals that take place in the summer period and we have been involved as the production company operating the festivals for the last three years.

“The reason we are applying for a new licence is because traditionally we have used the premises licence to host two festivals.

“The Strawberries and Creem Festival has made the decision not to return to Cambridge.

“We have taken that opportunity to revise licence conditions and are looking to introduce potential concerts in place of the Strawberries and Creem Festival.

“The main thing is to open up the chance to hold concerts on a weekday, for example holding a classical concert, we want to be more flexible about when they take place, so rather than a Saturday it could take place Tuesday.”

The Cambridge Club Festival is returning to Childerley Orchard, as the Cambridge Independent has reported, and will also be covered by the new licence.

He said the new licence “strengthened” the conditions around restricting the noise from events, and said they would be reducing the potential capacity from 24,999 people to 19,999.

Mr Feigen said 19,999 was still an “overestimate” as they had never held an event with more than 12,000 people.

Concerns over noise and the potential for anti-social behaviour were raised by members of the public.

But Mr Feigen stressed that the new licence strengthened conditions around restricting noise and said they had not breached any of the existing conditions at previous events.

Licensing officers confirmed they had received “very limited complaints” about them.

Mr Feigen said they were “robust” systems in place to deal with any anti-social behaviour, including an on-site security team and a separate team at the railway station to make sure there were no “spillover issues”.

He also said they had worked with environmental health officers to set the conditions and highlighted that they and the police had not raised any concerns.

Mr Feigen said: “We are not asking for anything more than what we have, we are just asking for a different format of the days - that is the key change.

“We are a very experienced production company and have run five festivals in these spaces for the last three years with no complaints and incidents minimal.

“Strawberries and Creem Festival is moving on from Cambridge. Putting on more family-friendly festivals will be giving back to people in our view.

“We have never breached a licensing condition, we have a good relationship with the responsible authorities, which we will continue to have.”

The sub-committee granted the licence.

Chair Cllr Peter Sandford (Lib Dem, Caxton & Papworth) said: “I hope the event goes smoothly and you have a lot of people attend.”