“It is with great regret that we inform you of the cancellation of the November Carp Show @ Southend
It has always been in our agreement with the venue that we had exclusive use of the overspill parking area for our show as well as shared use of the rest of the car parking.
On a meeting on Monday with the Council and the venue( the venue lease the site from the council ), the council revoked this and effectively reduced our onsite parking by over half, they also gave us a definitive answer of our use of parking on the playing fields, which we had always hoped for at some point in the future- enabling everybody to park onsite.
Tuesday was spent looking at the practicalities of courtesy bussing even more visitors from nearby car parks. This has always been in our armoury but now forced with using multiple car parks across a congested busy weekend town, is simply not workable.
It’s a massive blow to us, with 10 months work and meetings all for nothing not to mention expenditure.
Our top priority now is you – our exhibitors and we hope that making a firm decision now with a month to go to the show, protects you as much as possible from unnecessary outlay.
Moving forward, anyone who has booked hotels etc and cannot get refunds, we will reimburse you. Simply forward your hotel bill to us with an invoice.
We will run the January show at Brentwood on the 28th-29th with normal paid entry.
The Ricoh show on February 18-19th will be run as free entry and we will reduce our rates to you all as compensation.
We massively believe in this format and believe this show will be massive and importantly is privately owned with ample onsite parking.”
TF_geepster.
