In March 2014, I submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to Mendip District Council for the Premises License and supporting documentation for Glastonbury Festival.

Today, two and a quarter years later, I received an inch-thick sheaf of paperwork in the post.

The Documents

These documents were released by Mendip District Council under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, with reference number FOI/2015/341.

Editor’s note: I had to scan in some 350 pages to put these online. A few pages appear to have been truncated - this is an artefact of the page trimming from my scanning software, and no content has been lost. The size of the PDFs could probably be improved but bandwidth is cheap.

Copyright note: Although these documents retain the copyright of their original author, anyone may request a copy from MDC, incurring them additional expense and hassle at a time where they’re clearly very stretched for resources.

In my request, I gave permission for MDC to omit (at their discretion) any documents which would be especially sensitive and difficult to redact. As far as I can tell from the required documents in the Operating Schedule, the documents they didn’t provide are:

  • Major Incident Plan
  • Medical and Welfare Plan
  • Noise Management Plan
  • Site Plan
  • Water Supply Plan
  • Schedule of Key Dates

Why?

As well as being a fan of Glastonbury and an attendee for over 10 years, I’m also a festival organiser myself (on a rather smaller scale), and interested in the big infrastructure needed to put these massive events together.

You don’t need to FOI request EMF’s event management plan; you can find it on GitHub.

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