The Red Hot Chilli Peppers drew the curtain on one of the wettest T in the Parks.
The American rockers headlined the final day of a crucial year for Scotland’s biggest music festival.
Despite original forecasts of record-breaking temperatures, torrential downpours throughout Saturday and Sunday transformed the Strathallan Castle site into a mudbath.
It caused some problems for traffic leaving the site, with at least one car having to be towed out by tractor. There were also reported delays at the pick-up point.
However, despite the wet whether, it appears that festival boss Geoff Ellis’ gamble to move into the new rural Perthshire setting has finally paid off.
He said that the new traffic management strategy had worked “exceedingly well” and insisted that Strathallan would be the festival’s home for years to come.
“We got the traffic in and out very quickly,” he said. “The buses were cleared within an hour of the arena closing on Saturday and the car parks were emptied quickly too. We would have been lucky to get that at Balado.”
Mr Ellis said: “Obviously, we are very pleased this has worked. A lot of time has been invested in this traffic plan and we knew that it would work in theory. The test was always going to be once it was operational.”
However, there were calls on social media to have the event scrapped after the tragic deaths of teenagers. Some made comparisons with the Arches club in Glasgow, which was forced to close after complaints of disorder and drug use.
DF Concerts will still need to secure a public entertainment licence to stage the event again in 2017.
“When you work on festivals, people are used to having to deal with things like rain and other issues,” said Mr Ellis. “No one wants to have to cope with the kind of tragedies we saw on Thursday, but equally you can’t prepare for things like that.”
He pledged that “tweaks” could be made for future years, but didn’t anticipate making any more major changes.
By late Sunday afternoon, Police Scotland reported 40 arrests across the event – a significant decrease from this time last year.
Hospital tent visits are down on last year with 311, the majority for minor ailments.
Councillor Dennis Melloy, of the licensing committee, said all issues will be taken into account when making a decision on next year’s show.
“I was shocked and saddened that two young lives had been lost, possibly due to drugs,” he said. “Unfortunately, this follows on from a drugs-related death last year, the first year at Strathallan.
“This should be a major wake-up call to anyone thinking of experimenting with any types of drug.”
He said: “T in the Park is a city for the weekend and drug-taking and criminality occurs in every city, but we must find a way to protect our young people when they come to festivals.”
Mr Melloy said he will ask police for details of all drug-related incidents in and around the site. “We all want everyone to have a great time at T in the Park, but this has cast a black cloud round the whole event.
“The licensing committee will have to wait until the police and council officers on the ground have finished their investigation. It is far too early to make any decision about next year.”
