Copy of organiser’s email

Press Release dated 25 April 2024

It is with very great regret that The Rotary Club of Royston has to announce the cancellation of this year’s Royston Kite Festival.

This year for the first time ever, we were asked to obtain section 38 planning approval for our Kite Festival on Therfield Heath. Section 38 approvals relate to works on common land and are granted by the Planning Inspectorate based in Bristol.

We submitted our application in November last year. Applications can be processed in a matter of weeks if there are no objections. However, an objection has been raised by Natural England and we are still waiting for the Planning Inspectorate to make their decision. We have now reached a point where we must start to incur costs if the event is to take place this year, and we cannot recover those costs if approval is denied and the event has to be cancelled. And so we have very reluctantly decided to cancel this year’s event.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has supported the event over the past 30 years including: main  sponsors: Johnson Matthey, Tees Law &  NCPI Solutions. We would also like to thank various friends of the festival, including: all of our amazing Kite Flyers, Birches Funfair, Paul & Kay Readhead, the Scouts, The Friends of Therfield Heath as well as the Hertfordshire Constabulary, the Hertfordshire Fire Brigade and others.

Over the years, you have helped to raise over £100,000 for mostly local charities including: Home Start; The Sick Children’s Trust; East Anglia Air Ambulance; Angels (a Hertfordshire Charity supporting children with ADHD) Hertfordshire MIND Network (a local mental health charity) and many others.

Martin Berry