A WEEK ago he was looking for a five star hotel to accommodate Blue’s Simon Webbe but today Matthew Broadfield is nursing a financial hangover after cancelling this Saturday’s Fenland Festival.

There will be no Simon Webbe at the Auction Grounds off the A141 near March and nor will there by any of the other 12 acts - which included Fugative, DJ Luck, MC

Neat and The Artful Dodger -promised by Mr Broadfield.

Fenland Festival is dead- and music lovers who bought tickets face an uncertain outcome over a refund. Astonishingly Mr Broadfield has changed his website to promote a 2012 festival with no explanation of why he cancelled the 2011 event.

Mr Broadfield used social media site Twitter to announce the festival’s axing – in a posting last night at around 9pm he claimed health and safety requirements had forced him to the brink.

He claimed he was being “held to ransom” over a �13,000 bill to meet health and safety requirements for preparing risk assessments and hiring security staff.

“Sorry,” he tweeted. “All people will be refunded in due time.”

Earlier today Mr Broadfield emailed me to say all tickets bought for this year’s festival will “gain access” to another festival he claims to already be planning for August 25, next year.

“I just hope people understand, this time with no problems like the first one,” he wrote.

“I am so sorry it was unforeseen circumstances with greedy people and the next one will be all sorted months and months before this time.

“I got hit with a �13k bill after the conditions were imposed; the security firm added another �1,000 on top I feel because they knew they had to be there.”

He added: “It was not viable to pay that much for just risk assessments so tried in vain to come to an agreement but they never backed down.

“They withdrew only yesterday and I was informed by my solicitor that I had no option but to cancel it even though I had got in place another company to be security and other people to do the event/traffic management.”

Last weekend Mr Broadfield was selling festival tickets in Wisbech from the back of a burger van in the Market Place and at various times had promised “tickets going fast, buy now to avoid disappointment to be at Fenland’s first major festival.”

However he was beset with meeting licensing and legal requirements and it was only recently he persuaded Fenland Council and Cambs Police he had a credible business plan. Now police will still be forced to deploy officers this weekend to the festival site anyway– to turn away any fans that may have not have been told of the 11th hour cancellation.

Police also intervened to stop Mr Broadfield altering an agreement not to charge for parking- a condition imposed to ensure traffic flowed freely into the auction grounds site.