Shrewsbury’s popular Beer Festival has been forced to leave the Music Hall after it was claimed council bosses trebled hire costs.
The 19th annual festival will start tomorrow, Friday, but it will be held at the Buttermarket on Howard Street instead after borough council officials said they could no longer subsidise the popular two-day event, which draws crowds of around 2,000 people to the town.
More than 100 beers, ciders, perries and fruit wines will be available to sample at the festival and there will be live entertainment from bands.
Martin Edwards, local Campaign for Real Ale member, said: “The beer festival is a good thing for Shrewsbury as it draws large visitor numbers. The rent they wanted to charge us this year to hire out the venue had trebled and it just wouldn’t have made it viable.
“We would have had to charge £4 or £5 a pint which people wouldn’t have wanted to pay. They told us we had been paying too low rent for too many years.”
Adam Burgan, programme and marketing manager at the Music Hall, said: “We have had to revise all our hire costs and we were subsidising the beer festival for a number of years, but we were using money from other events such as the pantomime to do this.
“We were no longer in a position to keep costs down and we felt that we had to be fair and charge everyone the same amount.
“When we sat down with them and worked out the new costs it was much more than they had been paying.
“We certainly didn’t want to get rid of them and we worked closely with them to find an alternative.”
Nigel Bevan, festival organiser, said: “CAMRA has not fallen out with the council it is just the fact that the increased hire charges would make running our Beer Festival at the Music Hall non-viable.
“We have found an alternative venue which we are happy with and at an affordable cost.”
The festival opening times are Friday from 12pm-11pm and Saturday from 12pm-9.30pm.
Admission costs on Friday are £2 from 12pm-6pm (members £1); Friday 6pm-11pm £3 (members £2); Saturday 12pm-5pm £2 (members £1); Saturday 5pm-9.30pm £3 (members £2).