Recommendation 2

Government-backed insurance is crucial to mitigating the Covid-19 related risks to festival organisers and enabling them to start planning, as the vast majority do not have the financial resilience to cover the costs of another year of late-notice cancellations. Despite the events and insurance industries proposing a range of solutions for how such a scheme might work, the Government have refused to take multiple opportunities to address the market failure in the provision of insurance for live events this summer and set the conditions to unlock the significant economic and cultural contribution made by festivals and their supply chains. Although there remains considerable uncertainty around the risks of new Covid-19 variants, the Government’s plan to wait until all restrictions are lifted will simply be too late for festivals this summer. With restrictions on lower-capacity, socially distanced outdoor events already having been lifted, the Government must act now.