Having read the article about complaints about the Beachdown Festival (The Argus, November 26), I cannot allow the misinformation that it contains to go unanswered.

Firstly, no one in the Beachdown team has ever or will ever “tip Beachdown to be the new Glastonbury”. That accolade was made by Argus journalist Jessica Bauldry when she dubbed Beachdown “Glastonbury-on-Sea”.

It is our express intention to never grow Beachdown beyond a boutique-sized event because in our opinion that is when a festival loses its vibe.

Beachdown will never apply for a capacity greater than 20,000 attendees and comparisons of Beachdown to Glastonbury and the inference that our intention is to have 140,000 people up on the South Downs are at best highly inflammatory.

Richard Corner’s fears that “thousands of people would head down from London when they heard there is a rave on the Downs” are misplaced. On the Saturday of the event, everyone basked in sunshine and thousands of people did not drive down from London. There is no comparison between illegal raves and a well-organised, ticketed festival such as Beachdown.

The longest queue of traffic to enter the Beachdown car park was nine cars. The temporary traffic lights, installed at our expense in case there was any traffic build-up, were never switched on.

Beachdown’s organisers are liaising with the relevant authorities to ensure that any issues or problems that occurred this year will not occur again in 2009.

We welcome feedback and involvement from all members of the community which is why, in February and March, I answered questions about Beachdown at meetings of both Poynings and Fulking parish councils to be as accountable as possible with the communities there.

We also gave out 150 free tickets to residents of both villages so they could come and judge Beachdown for themselves.

If anyone has any queries or concerns about Beachdown after reading the article, please email info@beachdownfestival.com and we will be happy to answer them.

Joe Pidgeon, Beachdown Festival Director