The community that hosts Scotland’s best-known music festival has raised concerns that the event is becoming too big.
Since it moved to Balado, T in the Park has expanded significantly. From an initial two days, there are now festival-goers on site for four days, Thursday to Sunday, with 85,000 revellers enjoying the entertainment on the Saturday and Sunday.
Last month Perth and Kinross Council agreed to allow organisers DF Concerts to sell an addition 10,000 tickets for the Friday of this year’s festival.
That will bring the day ticket attendance to 15,000 when added to the 70,000 camping capacity for that day, the overall capacity on the Friday would be in line with Saturday and Sunday.
Permission for the increase was granted by councillors despite an objection from Kinross Community Council.
The council has long had good links with the festival organisers and annual meetings ensure that relationship is maintained.
The painstaking detail that DF Concerts puts into planning the event also minimises its impact upon the community.
Nonetheless the community council is concerned by the increasing size of the event in particular the disruption that could be caused to local traffic by the increasing number of festival-goers making their way to Balado on working week days.
The community council is also disappointed at the lack of formal consultation on the increase in ticket sales.
The council has said it had no obligation to inform the community council of DF Concerts’ proposal.
Letters were received by the community council after details of the increase were revealed.
Concerns included that the increase would defeat the purpose of staggering the number of festival-goers arriving each day and that it would, in effect, create an extension to the number of ”main event” nights.
In a letter to the council’s committee, Colin Rodger, head of events for DF Concerts, said it believed changes to the site and a proven track record on traffic management made the request not unreasonable.
The site redesign involved an extension of the arena into an area previously used as a campsite, extending camping into a former car park and relocating the Slam Tent.
DF Concerts said the increase in numbers would mean it is be better placed to attract top-name acts on the Friday night.
Mr Rodger said: ”The Kinross community is hugely important to us. We would like to reassure those concerned that changes to our Friday ticket numbers have been made with full consideration of the local area.”
He added: ”We’ve taken on board the opinions and insight of residents, as well as the police, council and our other partners and feel confident that now is the right time to welcome more day visitors to the event.”