This years Mathew Street Festival has been cancelled for health and safety reasons.

The loss of the Pier Head because of the building and regeneration work means organisers have had to scrap one of the city’s most popular events.

A firm working on behalf of the Culture Company said it was impossible to guarantee the safety of the 100,000 expected visitors to the city centre.

Merseyside Police have backed the decision and a full review of future plans for the festival has been ordered.

Chief Executive of Liverpool City Council, Colin Hilton, said: “We have been working tirelessly for months to try and make the Mathew Street Festival work in the city centre. Unfortunately, it has just not been possible to make it happen this year.

We have a responsibility for the safety and welfare of every single person attending the event.

“We brought in the country’s leading experts to examine our plans, and look at the health and safety issues, and we have to take their advice. We are rightly proud of the festival, and were desperate for it to go ahead this year, but public safety must come first.”

Merseyside Police’s Assistant Chief Constable, Helen King, said: “Having had sight of the advice from the independent consultants to Liverpool Culture Company, we fully understand why they have made the decision to cancel Mathew Street festival this year. Public safety has to be the paramount consideration.”

This announcement has thrown fresh doubt over the city’s ability to stage other large-scale events, including the 800^th birthday celebrations next month.

But organisers insist cancelling this years Mathew Street Festival are because of unique circumstances and wont affect the future of other events.

Jason Harborow, Chief Executive of the Liverpool Culture Company, said: “In many ways, the Mathew Street Festival has become a victim of its own success this year. The huge growth in the popularity of the festival, combined with the loss of the Pier Head, presented us with a massive problem.

“Unfortunately, that problem has proved to be insurmountable. We worked hard to try and find a way to stage the event in the city centre, but even after months of planning we were still not satisfied. As a last resort we employed national safety experts Capita Symonds to see if they could see a way through these intractable problems. Sadly, they have concluded there is still too great a risk to attempt to do so.”

“The festival has become an integral part of the city centre’s calendar of activities. We know that businesses and the public want to keep it in the city centre, and that’s why we’ve tried right until the very end to achieve that.”

The major difficulty in staging this year’s Mathew Street Festival has been the redevelopment of the Pier Head which, in recent years, has served as a focal point for the festival.

The Pier Head can accommodate up to 34,800 visitors at any one time, but visitors to this year’s festival would have to be accommodated on the city streets – many of which are also undergoing regeneration works.

The works at Pier Head include an extension to the Leeds Liverpool canal link, a replacement Mersey Ferry terminal with new visitor attraction, a new cruise liner terminal and the new Liverpool Museum.

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