Founder Mary Reader said, “My co-chair Terry Lester and I have been consulting with HFAF committee members and the Highcliffe and Walkford Parish Council to establish whether it is sensible – or even feasible – to go ahead this year, due to the many uncertainties.

“The festival was due to take place on Saturday 12 and Sunday 13 June 2021. However, the problems emanating from the evolving COVID crisis have meant that we can never be sure that there will be no more lockdowns later in the year.

“BCP have advised us that there will in any case be a lot more safety requirements placed on us this year, in addition to those we would already have in place. Even before the latest problems associated with the new variant strain of the virus, we were told that the Safety Advisory Group (SAG) will not be meeting until March. Having lost a considerable amount of money last year due to non-reimbursable payments made to our contractor, to BCP itself, and to HMRC in respect of a tax bill following the setting up of our CIC, we feel as CIC directors that it would be irresponsible to risk losing even more money.

“We have discussed putting on a smaller event by using only the recreation ground but feel that it would be irresponsible to encourage large numbers of people to come together until the virus is properly under control.

“We do hope that residents and our traders understand the dilemma that we find ourselves in. We would dearly love to be planning our 6th (or 7th!) festival rather than talking about a further postponement to 2022, but we have to take into consideration the health and well-being of our committee, visitors and our bank account.

“There is much determination to carry on by our volunteer committee and so we hope that we can have the continued support from our sponsors, traders and visitors for the future. “