Summer Pops festival is cancelled

A music festival held in Merseyside has been cancelled because of costs.

Liverpool City Council has been staging the Summer Pops festival since 2001, with acts including Elton John, The Who and New Order performing.

But a special panel set up to find an operator to run this year's festival for the council has revealed that all three bidders want to be subsidised.

The executive board of the city council has now decided to cancel the event following recommendations by the panel.

Last year's loss

The Summer Pops originally began as a classical series under the banner of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra in a big top on Kings Dock and was later taken over by the city council.

It evolved into a month-long series of popular concerts featuring some of the biggest names in popular music, but not every concert sold out and the series rarely made money.

Last year's £800,000 loss brought the total cost for council tax payers to £3m.

And although the council has put the event out to tender to reduce running costs, the three companies bidding to run the event wanted subsidies from the council of between £500,000 and £750,000.