COUNCILLORS have given financial support to a food festival which is due to return to Wellington next year. They approved a request for a £750 grant to help fund the annual Eat:Festival in the town.

The 2023 festival – which will attract dozens of market traders to the town – is all set to take place on September 2. But organiser Beverley Milner Simonds, who attended the town council’s finance committee meeting on December 12, told councillors it was important for them to ensure that the festival planned for Wellington was financially viable.

There were some frosty exchanges between her and a councillor at the start of the debate, when she refused to reveal how the organisers earned their living.

Cllr John Thorne said: “I’m not too happy about this one. We support local organisations which benefit the local community. The food market used to be a local event for local people, but it changed in 2016 and it has become a travelling circus that comes to town once a year.”

Cllr Thorne looked at the list of participating local traders in the Eat:Festival and found just three. “It’s not enough for me and I can’t support it,” he added.

Cllr Marcus Barr said: “In 2016 we tried to get the Wellington Town Council to run the food festival and keep it in-house. It’s got to the stage now where the festival has lost our local traders and putting this on is unfair to them.”

Cllr Andrew Govier asked whether the festival was good for the town. He said that listening to the festival organisers it sounded as if there was a concern about the future viability of the festival being held in Wellington.

“It sounds to me that if we don’t support it, the festival could go,” he said. “I’m sure the festival is all about getting people into the town and looking at the market traders and shops in Wellington.

“I understand the reservations of other councillors, but for £750 I think we should support it. If we ran the festival ourselves it would cost a lot more than £750.”

Cllr Mike McGuffie added: “It is a good day and people do come into Wellington when it’s on.”

And the Mayor, Cllr Mark Lithgow, said: “If we limited those who could have a stall to just local traders, we wouldn’t have many here. It brings people into the area from far and wide and we have aspirations for Wellington to be a destination town.”

The committee voted to give the £750 grant applied for.