Cornwall Council has launched a public protection investigation following the crowd surge that landed seven people in hospital at Newquay’s Boardmasters festival last weekend.
A spokesperson for Cornwall Council said yesterday, “The council’s public protection service is currently investigating the incident that took place at the Boardmasters festival on Friday. We cannot comment further while this investigation is ongoing”.
A number of people who were injured in the incident have been critical of how festival organisers responded to the crowd surge, while other attendees have questioned whether the event should have been allowed to increase its capacity this year to 58,000 attendees, up from 53,000 in 2023.
Promoter Vision Nine insists it had “experienced pit management and security teams” in place across the festival site, though adds that any learnings from the council’s investigation will be used to inform the planning of future editions.
Responding to Cornwall Council’s statement, a Vision Nine spokesperson said, “The safety of everyone at Boardmasters is our first priority. As part of our event debrief process, we will be working closely with our local authority partners to examine the circumstances of Friday’s incident and ensure relevant learnings are included in the planning process for future events”.
The crowd surge occurred as festival-goers were waiting for a set from DJ Sammy Virji on Friday evening and caused a number of injuries. Seven people were taken to hospital as a result of the incident. Both the festival’s promoter and local police were subsequently keen to stress that, although the crowd surge was serious, and meant that Virji’s set was cancelled, it was an isolated incident that caused relatively minor injuries.
Following speculation online about the scale and circumstances of the crowd surge, the local police force issued a statement to clarify things, saying, “contrary to speculation, we can confirm that there have been no deaths as a result of this incident”. Meanwhile, in a social media post on Sunday, Vision Nine said the affected stage was re-opened “following a full review of safety management processes” and subsequently ran for the remainder of the event “without incident”.
“We would also like to reassure everyone that we have experienced pit management and security teams in place across the festival”, it went on, adding, “welfare and medical teams are available 24 hours a day”.
Nevertheless, many of those directly impacted by the crowd surge have been critical in media interviews, describing the incident as “carnage”, with one witness stating “there was definitely not enough security to handle the surge” and “I just don’t think the space and capacity was big enough this year”.
In a new interview, one festival-goer who suffered soft tissue damage to her foot during the crowd surge claims that support from festival staff in the wake of the incident was lacking.
Speaking to the BBC, she says that she waited for about an hour for help to arrive after being injured before her friends carried her to her tent. When she then went to the festival’s medical tent, “They gave me a bottle of water but that was it. They wouldn't give me any paracetamol, ice packs - they ran out of everything”.
In the end, the festival-goer’s parents drove to the festival to take her to a hospital back home. Her mother told the BBC, “It's your worst kind of nightmare because you feel so helpless as you’re so far away", adding that the festival “obviously wasn't well organised”.
Boardmasters increased its capacity this year by 5000 attendees, seeing total numbers increase from 53,000 to 58,000, with plans to add capacity for a further 7000 people at the 2025 edition of the event, bringing total capacity to 65,000 people.
The expansion of Boardmasters, and the economic boost it provides for the local area, was welcomed by the local council last year. It is now likely that Cornwall Council will be assessing whether that expansion contributed to Friday’s crowd surge, or if it was simply the result of a sequence of unfortunate events not connected to the size of the festival.
Vision Nine, founded by Julian and Andrew Topham, was acquired in 2022 by Superstruct, the festivals company led by Cream founder James Barton. Superstruct itself was bought by KKR in June.