A BLUES Festival will live on in Burnley, despite the decision to axe the town's world famous music event.

The assurance has come from leisure chairman Coun Barry Guttridge, who has also agreed to meet critics of the council's decision to pull the plug on the Burnley National Blues Festival.

Along with officers, Coun Guttridge has promised to consult and meet with the Burnley Chamber of Trade, hotel and guesthouse keepers, Burnley Marketing Partnership and the Town Centre Partnership before the next full meeting of Burnley Council.

The festival fringe operators have organised a petition against the decision to end the four-day Easter weekend festival.

Responding to the criticism, Coun Guttridge said the feasibility study by Burnley Mechanics' management team was a full and accurate report on Blues Festival income and expenditure, ticket sales analysis and primary source quantitative and qualitative information.

Councillors were satisfied it was an accurate presentation of the facts.

The reference to 30-40,000 visitors and subsidies of £18 a head being unacceptable was, he said, a basic misinterpretation of the report. The subsidy of £18 per head referred to ticket purchasers, who made a direct financial contribution to core festival income, as opposed to visitors who made none.

As a result of the unanimous decision at committee, a number of changes were being considered including:

change of date of the blues festival from Easter to the first May Day Bank Holiday

title change

reducing the festival from four to three days

re-allocation of some financial and physical resources from the festival into a new, diverse, popular programme of events.

Coun Guttridge added: "Burnley Council and Mechanics' staff are committed to providing and maintaining a modernised and strong blues event for the continued entertainment of the people of Burnley and visitors to the town.

"The new format will enable the organisers to concentrate on the core areas of Blues Festival success while reducing operating costs. None of the above changes can be described as drastic."

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.