GLASTONBURY Festival organisers have been asked to take action to reduce unwanted noise and ensure proper crowd control next year.

Mendip District Council, which issues the licence for the event, has published a report into this year’s festival outlining a number of concerns about how well things were managed.

Councillors and local residents raised concerns when the report came before the council’s scrutiny board last Tuesday (November 22).

Festival organisers Glastonbury Festival Events Ltd. (GFEL), will respond to the criticisms within a couple of months.

The report says the 2022 festival was “well planned and managed”, but adds improvement are needed in three area:

  • “excessive loudness and low frequency noise”;
  • measures to control the density of camping in the staff and performer areas to reduce fire risk and prevent “conflict between vehicles and tents”;
  • “improvements to crowd distribution across the site” to prevent crushes and injuries.

Nick Hall and Caroline Griffiths, who both live locally, said licence conditions were breached with loud amplified music.

Cllr Michael Gay said there were crushes at the Worthy Farm event, adding: "In terms of dynamics, it is the worst that I have seen it.”

Meeting chairman Cllr Chris Inchley said: "I had constituents contact me about the noise of the festival – even the local MP did the same.

“Anecdotally, talking to people who actually went to the festival, one comment made by many people was about the actual number of people on the site, especially on the Sunday.

"They said they felt rather unsafe with the volume of people.”

Cllr Heather Shearer, portfolio holder for community health and neighbourhood services, said: “Because it’s such a massive site, it’s clearly big enough for the people if it goes to the pinnacle of its numbers. The issue is really about crowd dynamics – about the pinch points when they move."

Marietta Gill, the council’s public protection manager, added: “There were definitely issues around the distribution and movement of people.

“Some acts were a lot more popular than was expected, and GFEL recognises that work needs to be done on that.”

Cllr Nick Cottle said the increased noise could partly be attributed to weather conditions.

He said: “It’s dependent on weather conditions, wind speed and other things that you’ve got to take into consideration. I mean no disrespect to the residents, but the weather conditions control a lot of where the sound goes to.”