UPDATE: As you probably heard Beachdown has been cancelled. A massive shame for Brighton, and looking to have a large knock on effect across the city, The Argus have plenty of news about what has happened. Some interesting accusations in the comments on their website, but from our end it looks like bad management of cash flow, a weak line up, the recession and a lax attitude to paying bills last year caught up with them. The news came one day after Loop went bankrupt.

Below is the “official statement” but as always it’s better to take these things with a grain of salt. What’s important is getting everyone owed their money back, from stall holders to ticket holders. With the latter in mind Resident have issued an official statement that they have work out with Rounder. They say that this will also apply to Guana Bar, Dance 2 and any other Brighton retail outlets that sold tickets for the event.

“To all our valued customers,

“Following the last minute cancellation of Beachdown, we felt it was important to clarify the situation as it stands, with regards to how this affects you as ticket holders.

“We have been operating on behalf of Future Festivals as a ticket agency, as we did successfully last year. We simply handle the transactions for a small booking fee & the face value of the ticket is handed over to the promoters. As such, Future Festival Ltd holds all the money from the sale of Beachdown tickets, not us. All Brighton ticket outlets have fully supported the Beachdown organisers by ensuring all monies taken from the sale of Beachdown tickets has been paid to them promptly.

“Up until now, we have been kept as much in the dark about the cancellation of Beachdown as you have & were given no advance notice of Future Festivals’ intentions. Directing ticket holders back to the outlets where they purchased the tickets from, having not informed these outlets of the situation, was a cowardly & easy way out of dealing with the fallout. Their failure to contact us has caused an immense amount of problems, not least because we haven’t been able to give you any concrete information about whether or not you will be able to obtain a refund.

“However, today, Joe Pidgeon (Managing Director of Future Festivals Ltd) finally got in touch with us & said that they are currently talking to their insurers about how best to handle the issuing of refunds to ticket holders. Realistically, this could be a fairly lengthy process & we certainly won’t hear anything until after the bank holiday, so we would like to ask that you continue to be patient while the situation is worked through. We promise to keep you up to date with progress via email & will obviously put pressure on the festival organisers to resolve this situation as quickly as possible.

“From the feedback we have had to date, if you paid for your tickets on a credit or debit card, it may well be worth you getting in touch with your card issuer to see if you are covered by them – many people are & it might be a quicker way of getting your money back.

“In the meantime, we would like to thank you for your continued patience & understanding & express our apologies for being unable to resolve this for you more speedily.

“Kind regards,
Natasha Youngs & Derry Watkins
(Resident Directors)”

Original Official Statement From Beachdown

“Dear All

It is with immense personal regret that the Directors of Beachdown Festival have been advised that they must announce that due to slower than forecast ticket-sales and lack of support at a critical time from our bank and certain suppliers that despite being so so close to being able to deliver Beachdown Festival we are unable to do so. Very simply we were unable to meet the demands that the current economic climate put against us and at the eleventh hour despite having most of the infrastructure in place we have been forced to cancel the event.

We wish to say at this time how desperately sorry we are to all those who have bought tickets or were participating in the event and to say that we all here are personally shattered especially after eleven months of battling against the recession to try and put this event on and coming so close. We also wish to advise everyone that we explored every possible avenue to finance the event including re-mortgaging our houses to combat the unwillingness of banks to support us.

We will do everything in our power to give the best information that we can via the web-site and via email but we ask that people understand that we will also be inundated with enquiries but we will endeavour to communicate to everyone as best we can.

We ask all ticket-holders to get information from the outlet that you purchased the ticket from in the first instance and once again we will do everything we can to get as much information as we can to everyone as quickly as we can.

Directors
Beachdown Festival”